Sovereign of the Karmic System-Chapter 687: Entering the Domain of Fate

"This might be a sign that we shouldn’t be doing this." Roley mumbled, uncertain about Daniel’s already dubious plan. His thoughts shared by about half the members of the party through grim smiles, but not by Daniel.

The obvious signs of amusement had never left his face. Even when he realized how vulnerable and weak crossing through the portal would leave him to external threats. Yet, while normal humans would eventually crumble under their worries, Daniel’s newfound hubris did not allow him to see the negative turn ahead as nothing other than a challenge to his power and dominion.

That was the unfortunate nature of aspects of existence.

He had heard Roley’s words, and to some extent he could even bring himself to rationalize ’fear’, but he had no intention of stopping – Not for them, nor out of safety. He was a god after all, and gods don’t feel threatened. So, before the group could even attempt to put an end to their journey, Daniel approached the portal and dove right through, not bothering to waste a single word.

Immediately, he noticed some differences.

The feeling wasn’t quite the same as that of entering a portal to an open universe, which many had described as a gentle, vertical belly flop into a mirror of room temperature water. This portal’s consistency was closer to gelatinous mud. It was solid, to some extent, but it did not possess a structure capable of resisting pressure from anything but a toddler’s strength. Yet, while the portal could hardly be called a barrier, its archaic and mystical nature was still able to wash through Daniel’s body, stunting the innate essences tied to his mortal nature and expelling all powers of existence stored, or hidden within.

Had someone in possession of Daniel’s eyes witnessed this from the outside, they would have seen an immense blaze of golden power explode out of his back, dying on the portal’s dark blue surface like a suicidal asteroid meeting its fiery end upon contact with the surface of a giant blue planet.

"That damn.." Roley growled before turning towards Der and the others. "I should have guessed he would do something like that." He added apologetically.

Der shook his head from side to side. He was looking around with curiosity, enjoying the feeling of his cold gauntlet brush against his clean shaved cheek. That was the closest thing to a gentle breeze’s touch against his face after centuries of not shaving. "He would have done the same regardless of whether we opposed him or not." Der said in a cold, yet somewhat reassuring manner.

"I agree." Aeron joined in – His voice still was disembodied and deep. A whisper one hears more with their minds than their ears.

Roley let out a deep, exasperated sigh. Every minute he spent in the company of Daniel was a further reminder of why he shouldn’t become an aspect of existence, leading him astray from the latter’s desires.. But unfortunately, such moments weren’t as constant and as pressing as his growing desire for absolute power. They were more of a reverse hunger. He almost needed them to feed his humanity, or he would lose it.

Once calmer, Roley began descending towards Ian and the paladin, whom he intended to cross the portal with. A measure Daniel and Roley had previously agreed upon due to the latter’s powers. After all, if what waited for them on the other side was an immediate confrontation, Roley was the only one capable of effortlessly maintaining a breathable atmosphere for the only mortal present, Ian.

As the three started crossing through, a murmur reached them from behind.

"Can you do it now?" Der asked while carefully sliding his helmet back on, eyes shining through the slits like glowing white pearls.

Aeron’s now wholly human figure was standing beside him. He too was looking at the portal with interest, but whichever reaction such thoughts had on him, his body did not show. "No." He spoke without moving a muscle, yet somewhat relying through mental power the semblance of a disappointed shake of the head.

"No?" Der asked in surprise. "His power is going to be sealed down to your level. You said-"

For the first time Aeron turned towards the old warrior, matching his gaze with a pair of emerald eyes. "The problem isn’t him, it’s me. At my stage of cultivation tinkering with his subconscious is like attempting to complete a puzzle with my eyes closed. I can pick up the pieces, I can even force two pieces that do not much together, but I don’t trust myself with finishing the job." Aeron explained before slowly turning to look back at the large portal. "At least not in any way either you, me, or anybody else who cares about Dan would want it to be done."

Once done speaking Aeron descended as well, putting a sudden end to the conversation. He was followed soon after by Der and Wolfe, then together, the three crossed through the portal together.

When Der emerged from the blue sludge, he found himself shrouded in darkness – A change he had expected when leaving the unfamiliar odd inverted colors of the trigate and entering a regular universe’s open space, but that was not the case. As a matter of fact, at some point during his crossing he had stopped floating, and was now standing on solid ground.

By his side were the figures of Wolfe, Aeron, Ian and the paladin, who were staring at their surroundings with confusion.

What had surprised the group was the absolute absence of light. A detail that rarely matched the nature of deep space, where light was everywhere, constantly bombarding anyone who traveled it with images of far away stars and planets. Yet, the sky was pitch black, and they were standing upon what felt like a single absurdly big stone slab.

The portal they had just walked out of towered behind them, protected by the familiar blue bubble of dense spatial essence that protected the universe-side of every inter-dimensional portal. It too appeared to be standing above the stone surface, which was impressive, considering some portals were big enough for whole planets to fit through.

"Some light would be useful.." Ian muttered to himself.

As if suddenly reminded of his powers, Roley awkwardly gathered his spiritual essence and directed it to his left eye, where the now sealed treasure of primordial light had been engraved, struggling through two thousand years worth of rust. Then, all of a sudden, there was light.

A powerful cone shaped ray of light pierced through the surrounding darkness, following the twitchy movements of the scholar’s eye from which it had been liberated. Its desire to travel the infinity of space was short lived, however, for it was forced to stop just a few hundred feet from the rest of the party, where it illuminated the figure of Daniel, and what he was staring at. A second wall that, in all intents and purposes, was identical to the floor they were walking on.

With the path between the group and Dan illuminated, Ian broke off from the group and ran towards the now weakened aspect of existence. "What are you looking at?" He then asked.

Daniel ignored the youth’s question. He turned around, and after shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand, he ordered, "The spatial treasure. Try to use it."

"What?" Roley asked while instinctively reaching for the glass bead hidden within his robe.

"Try to open a portal." Daniel added.

Roley did what he was told. He redirected a portion of the essence that had turned his eye into a planetary lighthouse, and injected it into the spatial treasure in his hand. Immediately, his brows furrowed in confusion. "I.." he muttered quietly as his brain started to work overtime.

Suddenly, a small portal opened just a few feet away, closing immediately after.

Once the small portal closed, Roley turned to look at Daniel with a dumbfounded expression. "I can’t. I don’t know whether it is this wall, or something beyond it, but I can’t create a connection between this space and anything beyond about ten inches from that wall’s surface."

"Haha." The aspect of Karma snickered. "This must be the second layer of protection."

Daniel had guessed it right. He knew to some extent that there would be several blockades between him and the shroud of fate, but his previous guess had often revolved around the presence of guards, or having to face powerful cultivators or other aspects of existence, but puzzles? That he had not expected.

Still, he was not worried. He continued examining his surroundings along with the rest of the group for several minutes, until finally, someone found an anomaly.

To warn them of the discovery was not someone’s voice, but a snort hidden under the sharpening of blades.

The group approached the wolf, circling around him. In response, the metal elemental turned towards Aeron. "There are metallic veins inside the stone. He says he can use them to go through the wall." Aeron explained, translating the mute elemental’s thoughts into words.

After a brief nod from the members of the group, Wolfe collapsed on itself, turning as liquid as mercury, then seeped into small metallic veins present on the floor’s surface. When only about a tenth of his mass remained, however, the blob of molten metal began to squirm and morph erratically, stretching and splitting, turning into spikes, springs and odd nameless shapes.

"What is going on? What is he doing?" Roley asked the mental cultivator, visibly worried. He had seen metal elementals behave that way in the past, and such behavior was rarely ever caused by positive feelings.

Aeron raised his palms in confusion. An elemental’s consciousness wasn’t like that of a human, whose presence was easy to locate somewhere in their heads, often buried underneath layers upon layers of mental power. While the former was probably easier to read due to the lack of mental protection, finding it was a different thing, for an elemental’s consciousness shifted constantly within their bodies, often moving towards their point of focus. After all, elementals were not exactly in control of their bodies the way a human was. They moved by morphing their bodies.. So when Wolfe entered the vein, he left a vein-shaped body, while his consciousness dug through at the front.

While Aeron could not perceive Wolfe’s thoughts, however, he had spent enough time with him to know that when an elemental’s body shifted erratically the way Wolfe’s was, that usually meant they were receiving some sort of damage.

Before the group could make any attempt at helping, however, Wolfe’s metallic body once again emerged from the vein, pooling and bubbling at their feet. Minutes later, the elemental managed to retake the shape of a wolf, albeit a much smaller version of one. This seemed to exhaust the last bit of its energy, for it spent the following minute or two standing still, and staring at the floor like a molded metallic sculpture.

"He is.. confused. His mind is almost blank." Aeron said after spending a few moments to examine the elemental.

"I can help him recover." Roley said while taking a step forward, but he was soon stopped by the pale hand of the mental cultivator.

"There is no need. He suffered a mental attack." Aeron said as his palms approached the steel cub, stopping inches from direct contact, then started to glow with a pale green light.

Within moments, the metal elemental seemed to regain life. Its body cracked, its head turned, then once again stopped the moment its onyx eyes encountered the metallic vein he had just come out of. For a moment Aeron was able to perceive a deep sense of fear and anxiousness in the elemental’s gaze.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freeweɓnovēl.coɱ.

The treatment went on for about a minute, after which, Wolfe gave the mental cultivator a faint yet grateful nod of his metallic head. Only then did Aeron relax, and lowered his arms. Then, after trading a few looks, Aeron turned to face the other members of the group, as stoic as he ever was. "He says that going through the walls is not going to be a problem, but-"

"Walls? Plural?" Daniel asked.

"Yes. Two walls. The first one being ten feet thick, with a second one parallel to the first, yet separated by about two inches of.. collapsed space." Aeron explained, causing the temperature of the immense stone cage to drop a few degrees.

Those who knew what collapsed space was, inhaled sharply in response.

Both Ian and the female paladin tried to pay attention to the conversation, but at this point, the amount of times they had lost track could not be counted with the fingers of both their hands combined. Still, they found it useful to pay attention to the group’s reactions. They noticed how Roley instinctively tightened his hold on the transparent pearl he was holding, how Der secured a path of space between the group and the portal, and how the cordial smile on Daniel’s face had turned maniacal.

"What a lunatic! HAHAHA!" Daniel yelled before bursting out in an earthy laugh.