By the time Rio was done playing the flute to his heart’s content, it was already noon.
The temperature rose, making the environment quite hot, and Rio stood up as he placed his flute beside his waist.
He took a deep breath and looked at the calm sea one last time before he went completely emotionless once again.
The slight smile from his face disappeared as he switched into serious mode instantly, and his aura became near invisible as he suppressed it to the extreme.
’I would have liked to explore the dwarf kingdom more if I had the chance, but I don’t have that much time on hand...’
’Let’s go; I have an important mission to do...’
Without hesitating for a single second, Rio jumped off the cliff and let his body fall down freely.
He wasn’t wasting time when he started playing flute; he was actually waiting for the perfect time.
Rio glanced at his wristwatch while falling down and noticed that it was correct: 12:00 PM now.
’It’s a good that I had the information beforehand or I would have had to figure out everything myself...’
Ashtel gave Rio a lot of information inside those secret documents, and the most important of them all was the exact ’time, location, and method’ you would need to access the ’weak node.’
Rio’s entire body was covered with sword intent, so he wasn’t bothered about the powerful wind hitting his body or the air resistance.
He fell with insanely fast speed, and it seemed that if he kept heading down this way, he would eventually fall in the sea.
But that never happened.
Rio brought out his flute and swung it downwards with immense force mid-air.
[Sword Intent: Maximum Output!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Space Type: Spatial Rupture!]
*BOOOOM!!!* *CRACK!!!*
Usually, only peak SS-rankers like Ashtel are able to shatter the space-time fabric so easily, and Rio couldn’t have done it either if he was trying to do it in any other place.
But this location was ’unique.’
This was a ’weak node’ connecting the material world to the spirit realm.
It was actually possible for even peak S-rankers to shatter the space-time fabric in this location at a particular time of a particular day.
Today was the day of the full moon, and Rio chose the exact time that Ashtel had mentioned.
Thus, Rio succeeded in his first try.
The space-time fabric cracked like broken glass and shattered by Rio’s insanely powerful attack.
Unlike usual, this time the hole created after the cracking of the space-time fabric opened a temporary wormhole leading to the spirit realm, and Rio fell inside it with immense speed.
Rio wasn’t surprised by the appearance of the wormhole.
Usually, when Ashtel shatters the space-time fabric, what appears is the empty void or nothingness, as those are locations that are not connected to the spirit realm too deeply.
But shattering the space-time fabric in this place was different.
’It was much easier than I expected it to be...’
’If not for the time and instability factors, they could have established a permanent portal here leading to the spirit realm...’
With modern technologies, it’s possible to open a stable portal or wormhole, but the biggest reason they didn’t make a portal here is likely because that portal would then be unusable.
After all, it would connect directly to a place filled with miasma.
Miasma will start spilling out of the portal sooner or later, making it a threat to the environment, and everything in the area will be destroyed by corruption.
’This wormhole... it’s very fragile...’
Rio looked around him and noticed that the wormhole tunnel was very fragile in his eyes; if he wanted, he could just shatter it, but then he would be thrown out to some random location in the universe.
Rio didn’t have the time to do such a weird experiment at the moment, so he obediently passed through the wormhole.
After travelling inside of it for just a few seconds, Rio was immediately thrown out with immense speed.
Rio adjusted his posture mid-air and landed on the ground while doing the typical ’hero’ entrance!
After spewing Rio out, the wormhole disappeared instantly, but Rio could still feel that the space here was weak, and if he wanted to head back, he could just shatter the space and go back the same way he came.
Before Rio could even start his exploration, a horrible stench assaulted him, and the smell was so bad that Rio almost fainted on the spot.
Rio immediately stopped breathing and switched to mana for energy and then covered even his face with Sword Intent to completely isolate himself from the outside environment.
As an S-ranker, Rio didn’t need to breathe or eat; he could survive on mana alone.
’What the f*ck!? What is this horrible stench!?’
Rio looked around and noticed that he was standing on a boulder in the middle of a small lake, and the entire lake was pitch black.
"Liquid miasma.... And what is this... rotting corpses.... No there’s crude oil too..."
The entire lake was a mixture of crude oil, which obviously smelled extremely horrible and was toxic, and rotting corpses that were in such bad shape that it was hard to distinguish which creatures they belonged to.
And finally, there was miasmic corruption so condensed that even Rio couldn’t help but frown.
Rio looked around and noticed that the air was polluted with miasma and there were dark clouds in the sky made of condensed miasmic corruption.
There was a barren wasteland in every direction, and even the soil was pitch black due to miasmic corruption.
"This place really is filled with miasma to the brim..."
If it were any other S-ranker, they would have already started to get corrupted and suppressed by now.
Miasma does not like creatures that have mana in their body, and the moment someone enters this place, they would have been heavily suppressed by miasmic corruption.
Miasma would actively start to attack them!
Just standing on this boulder in the middle of this lake of miasmic rot for a few seconds would have been enough to shatter their mental barriers and start corrupting them from the inside out.
Only an SS-ranker could have remained unaffected in this horrific place.
*ogogog!!!kekekeoggogggoggg!!*
Just when Rio was looking at the area, a creature crawled out of the pitch-black lake of miasma and crawled towards the ground.
Rio originally thought that it was a snake, but to his shock, the thing had a snake-like body, but its entire skin had humanoid faces on it!
*ahhh!!! Ahhhh!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!*
When the weird creature walked out of the lake, all of the faces embedded in its body started screaming like crazy, making the scene look even more creepy and horrific.
’Mental and soul attacks?’
Rio’s eyes narrowed when he noticed those screams of pain were emitting powerful mental and soul attacks in all directions like crazy!
’What the f*ck is this weird being... I am sensing at least a dozen different souls continuously clashing against each other inside it’s body...’
A deep frown appeared on Rio’s face as the entire creature crawled out of the lake and started twitching all over as all the faces on its body started shedding tears of black blood.
*ahhhh!!! Ahhhh!!! Ahhhh!!!*
’All these souls... they are constantly clashing, damaging each other and... this is... this is torture of the highest levels!’