"From outside, this space may look smaller but due to various space-time factors, it’s much bigger from the inside..."
"You can say that it’s as big as the capital city of the human empire in terms of land..."
Rio nodded his head at Ellie’s words and asked,
"Why do trees and birds and other stuff exist here... they don’t seem real to me but they are not illusions either..."
Rio had never seen such a bizarre phenomenon.
Although the powerful purification enchantment was purifying this place continuously, that wouldn’t mean it would help other beings and creatures live in this place.
Even Ellie had to make a great sacrifice and play a big gamble to earn her right to live in this place; other things, no matter if they were trees or even small insects, shouldn’t have been able to live here at all.
And yet, Rio could see lush trees, grass, rabbits, birds, and many other cute-looking creatures everywhere.
"Ah, these?... these are projections made using soul fragments and puppets made of various rare materials..."
"I keep them around as pets to pass time... they are not real living beings, just some broken soul fragments giving life to random puppets..."
"Aren’t they cute! Hehe~"
Despite looking like a cold, distant, and beautiful princess, Ellie seemed very easy to get along with.
A smug look appeared on her face when talking about those cute-looking puppets, as if she was very happy and proud of them.
"You made them?... I didn’t know you had such insanely good soul manipulation skills... even I wasn’t able to detect that they were creatures made up of modified soul fragments..."
"This level of soul manipulation mastery... I have only seen it once before... it was done by the demon prince Alverto, who had the legendary skill ’Soul Resonance’!"
Rio’s own soul manipulation skills were highly inspired and highly influenced by that guy’s abilities and skills.
Before fighting him, Rio didn’t have that much mastery over souls and the sea of consciousness; Rio copied a lot of it from Alverto mid-battle.
But even then, Rio still can’t manipulate or modify souls as deeply and efficiently as Alverto; after all, he didn’t have the legendary skill ’Soul Resonance.’
Soul Resonance is the pinnacle-level skill that represents the very peak of soul mastery and knowledge of the sea of consciousness; not everyone is qualified to learn it.
Even Alverto spent more than a century to finally acquire that skill despite having so much talent and support given by a great being of immense power.
"Yes! That demon prince! He was the one who made these for me a long time ago..."
"Alverto once visited the spirit realm and back then I managed to establish a stable telepathic communication channel with him... I think he was using some kind of powerful artifact to communicate with me..."
"I traded with him... He wanted to find the grand seal of the final gamble... that great door to the sea of miasma’s location for some reason..."
Looking at that distant great door, Ellie spoke.
"I told him of its coordinates and then in return received a sealed crystal... he had infused it with his own powers and modified it according to my demands..."
"Breaking the crystal in this place unfolded this scenery and created all these projection..."
"For most of my time inside this big cage, I had been sitting on empty barren land with nothing interesting to look at... most of the time, I was just sleeping or watching my summoned projection explore the world..."
Ellie’s smile carried her sadness and her regrets all within it, and Rio was helpless to provide any words of consolation, as no words could heal a wound this deep and horrible.
"I think he recognized my summoned projection back when he attacked us in Oaklum because he already had sensed my aura decades ago when we traded..."
Back then, Alverto even mocked Ellie for being the greatest shame of the shadow dragon race, as she had abandoned her entire race for her own survival, and she was not even trying to do anything for their sake.
Alverto was devoting his everything for the sake of the demon race, and thus his motives were exactly the opposite of Ellie’s; that’s why he detested her, and that’s why he mocked her.
Perhaps if Alverto was not a demon but a shadow dragon, if he was in Ellie’s place, he wouldn’t have tried to hide like her but would have fought the destiny itself for the sake of his race’s survival.
That was the kind of individual he was, after all.
Alverto was a hero, but Ellie was not; she preferred to save herself before others, and there was nothing wrong in that either. It was just a difference of ideals and mentality.
A difference of ’Paths,’ and all ’Paths’ were equal; it was the one walking on them who determined what their value would be.
"So... how come you traded with him when you are stuck inside this cage?... There’s no way he could have made it inside this place at all... even I had to use unconventional methods..."
Rio can control miasma to such an extent that even demons can’t; thus, he was able to bypass those miasmic cracks and enter this cage. Alverto surely couldn’t have done that.
Even direct teleportation inside this cage was impossible because Rio could sense that the space-time fabric here was extremely solid due to that grand seal.
’Perhaps even SS-rankers can’t use teleportation inside here... this place is almost like it’s been stabilized with hundreds of powerful space-stabilizing anchors...’
Space-stabilizing anchors make the space-time fabric artificially solidify.
Thus, making it very difficult to manipulate or shatter the space-time fabric, causing teleportation and other space-related skills to be suppressed or become completely non-existent.
"I also don’t know what trick he used but using the co-ordinates I told him, he managed to open a sacrificial circle directly to this place..."
"I think he managed to reach very close to this place from outside but couldn’t enter physically so he tried to establish contact with me, who was already inside and then use me to enter inside..."
"I have no idea what he wanted from that great door but he only managed to send his power and energy inside and never managed to enter so he left in disappointment..."
Ellie got what she wanted, and the barren environment inside the cage was completely changed with Alverto’s powers, but Alverto didn’t manage to achieve his goals.
’Perhaps he wanted to open the seal and establish a better contact with the sea of miasma?... or was he trying to go inside the sea of miasma to look for a ’fragment’?’
Rio himself had two ’fragments,’ and he could sense the general direction in which another ’fragment’ existed.
And even he could sense that there was likely a ’fragment’ hidden somewhere inside the sea of miasma or in that direction at the very least.
Thus, it’s quite possible that Alverto wanted to find it for the sake of his plan of summoning the ’Spire of Ascension’ in this world and changing the natural order of the entire world.
’Thankfully Alverto did not find the third fragment he was looking for until I became strong enough, or he would have likely succeeded easily in his plans...’
If not for Rio, Alverto’s plan would have never failed, and the world would have been something completely different by now.