Rio smiled at the evil spirit’s question and pulled out his flute.
"In the world, only a person’s determination and ambition matter; if you follow the ’path’ of improvement, obviously you will become capable of conquering the world eventually!"
"Living without ambitions and goals is just as worse as dying..."
Rio smirked as he looked at the tall mountain before saying,
"Back in my hometown, there was a man... his wife was pregnant and he needed to take her to the hospital but the hospital was too far away..."
"A giant mountain stood in the way and the road to the hospital was too long, as it was built around the mountain..."
"His wife and his unborn child could not survive that long journey to the hospital... what do you think that man did after that?"
Rio smiled as he asked that question.
"That man shattered the mountain and created a new road with his own two hands right through the mountain!"
"Just so that no one else has to suffer as he had... many called him a madman, many called him an idiot... but he had determination and a goal pushing him forward..."
(Inspired from a real-life story, the story of ’Dashrath Manjhi, the man who moved mountains for his love.)
Rio raised the flute towards the sky as he said,
"If the world denies you salvation, carve a ’path’ to your own destiny with your own hands!"
"A person has infinite possibilities in life! You can do anything as long as you have that determination in you!"
[Sword Intent: Maximum Output!]
Rio did not use any skill or technique in that attack; he created a massive sword made out of pure sword intent that was so massive that it was touching the clouds in the sky.
Rio swung the sword downwards at the giant mountain and shattered it into bits!
*BOOOOM!!!* *SHATTTER!!!*
The space-time fabric trembled from the might of Rio’s power, and debris flew in all directions at supersonic speeds.
The entire mountain was shattered into two and destroyed to the very base of it.
Boulders and stones flew everywhere as Rio stood at the base of the shattered mountain with the evil spirit watching it all happen with a smirk on his face.
All the evil spirits and monsters present on the mountain were erased from existence and evaporated into nothingness with a single strike!
"Th-this!?.... wha..."
Noticing the evil spirit’s shock, Rio spoke.
"This is the work of a legendary skill, sword intent... the amazing thing about legendary skills is that even a random person can awaken them if their ambition and goals are strong enough..."
To awaken a legendary skill, the best method is having insanely high talent and the support of the laws of the world, like Link, Liam, and Riya.
The second-best method is having insane talent and forcing the laws of the world like Rio.
The final but most difficult method is to influence the ’world’ with just your ’path’ alone!
As long as you are ambitious enough in life, there is a chance that you can awaken a legendary skill even if you are not an awakener at all!
Legendary skills do not need mana to operate; they can be used solely based on your mental and soul power!
This is the reason why Rio didn’t use any skills and showed the power of his sword intent alone.
He was telling the evil spirit that it was possible for even him to have this level of strength as long as he walked the ’path’ of constant improvement!
"I-i... I have decided! I will do it! I will become better!"
The evil spirit finally found its determination to fight and exist; it finally found its reason to move on as it slowly let go of its unending hatred and regret.
Once it let go of its hatred and regret, its body started collapsing as its soul became free of all restrictions.
"Ah... it seems my time is over.... I hope I will be a better parent in my next life... I will become better in my next life!"
Rio nodded at the evil spirit’s words and asked,
"Good! By the way, I wanted to ask, do you know anything about the shadow dragons?"
Hearing Rio’s question the evil spirit fell silent for a while as if it was trying to remember something and then it spoke,
"The shadow dragons... they are... yes... they are corrupted souls... they.... They..."
Before the evil spirit could explain anything to Rio, its body shattered, and it disappeared into nothingness without leaving a single trace behind.
Seeing this situation, Rio could only shake his head helplessly.
"Another failed attempt... sigh..."
Rio is no saint; he didn’t come forward to help the other party just because he was feeling benevolent or something like that.
The cube of possibilities was pointing to the evil spirit, and it likely knew something important that could have helped Rio.
But Rio was also helpless; if it was any other place in the world, Rio could have just stabbed the other party with his sword and extracted all of the memories the other party’s soul held in it.
He didn’t do it here because he knew that if he tried that, the evil spirit would self-destruct on the spot and he would lose the opportunity to communicate with it.
’After managing to get it back to its senses, I only got a few seconds of time to converse with it...’
Rio shook his head in helplessness as he looked at the cube of possibilities once again.
And of course it had changed its directions once again!
It was now pointing to some other random location, which led to some other new possibility!
’I just taught him that there are infinite possibilities to everything, and now I am already facing that same situation myself...’
’I have to look through many possibilities one by one just to find a clue to Liam and Ellie’s location... it’s really inefficient and time consuming...’
Day and night did not exist in the spirit realm, and Rio had read from Ashtel’s documents that time worked in bizarre and irregular manners inside the spirit realm.
So, it was better to not wander there for too long or too far into dangerous places.
’Thankfully I can keep a track of time with my sword intent...’
Yes, Rio’s sword intent can actually work as a clock too.
A clock basically works on an oscillator, which is a device that oscillates or vibrates at a fixed frequency, and then there’s the ’counter’ which counts the frequency and calculates time.
Rio can simply do that by making his sword intent vibrate with a fixed frequency and calculate time by those frequencies.
This self-made clock of Rio is almost always working, never interrupted, and can even sense changes in gravity and space-time fluctuations to adjust the time frequency accordingly.
Even S-rank artifacts stop working in the spirit realm, so Rio couldn’t rely on ordinary clocks for time.
He came up with this idea to oscillate his sword intent back when he was hunting down criminals and used miasma quite often, causing his watch to malfunction.
’According to my clock... it’s been six hours since I entered the spirit realm and I have already seen quite a lot of bizarre things by now...’
’Sigh... forget it, let’s move on to the next possibility!’