Chapter 273 - 274: The Thin Man
Elsewhere in the forest, a thin man with floating seal-like runes orbiting his shoulders stopped in front of a particularly dense tree. He had entered through one of the gaps the Masters had left open and had been moving carefully ever since. His name was not widely known among the other multiversals. His face was forgettable.
But his rune foundation was extremely solid — solid enough that the living scripts responded to him almost naturally. Among everyone who had entered the ruin so far, he ranked somewhere in the top ten for pure rune mastery.
He rested two fingers on the bark and read in silence for almost a full minute. The seals around his shoulders spun slowly, processing. Then a residual intent surfaced. Dense. Old. Waiting.
He let it take him.
---
The forest vanished.
The void around him was different from anything he expected. He was no longer in a forest. Just empty, endless dark in every direction.
"Where is this?" he muttered under his breath.
That was when he saw the dark-robed figure standing in the exact center of the void, perfectly still. Eyes closed. Hands hanging at his sides. The air around him was completely motionless, as if even the void itself was holding its breath in anticipation of what was about to happen.
The thin man looked around and thought, ’Is this a memory?’
Then something shifted.
He felt it deep in his information particle bones. Something major and massive was about to happen to that figure.
Suddenly his own body reacted before his mind could catch up. His knees slammed into the void. Hard, as if his body automatically knew that what he was about to witness deserved the highest respect.
The impact of his knees on the void should not have been possible in this empty space, yet he felt it clearly.
Pressure built inside him — slow at first, then faster and heavier.
He tried to stand and fight the instinctive force that was making him kneel. A Multiversal had absolute control over their body.
Kneeling like this against his will was unacceptable.
Kneeling unconsciously in front of anyone was unacceptable.
Even worse, he was being suppressed by what was only a memory.
"Move for meeeeeeeeeeee!" he growled through clenched teeth. He roared, pouring everything into the command. "Move for me goddammit"
The floating seals that orbited his body accelerated violently. The runes on his robes flared bright.
He poured everything he had into trying to force his body upright.
It was all useless and fruitless. He couldn’t even move and atom. When suddenly again the darkness around him compressed inward like it was retaliating against his resistance. The crushing pressure became so intense that it slammed down on him in every direction at once and it felt as if the entire void was being pulled toward a single point and ready to be collapsed on— him.
The darkness compressed. His seals stopped working. The light on his robes dissipated. He could not move takeless of lifting even one finger. He could only kneel there, shaking, completely pinned, and watch what was about to happen.
’I’m being suppressed by a memory... just a residual memory... and I can’t even resist it.’
Then it began.
The Rune Sovereign’s eyes opened.
They were no longer dark. They were pure, blazing white, like staring straight into the center of a star.
He took one step forward. Just one.
And as a consequence
The void utterly disintegrated.
Not broken. Not cracked. It simply ceased to exist, It disintegrated the way antimatter erased matter upon contact — there was simply nothing left.
Fissures of pure white light spread outward from his foot in every direction, replacing the void itself. The floating scripts around him shattered into countless motes and reformed into something completely new. Something that did not belong to this space, this reality, or this level of existence. It could not even be described.
It was a structure that the thin man’s mind could not fully describe or comprehend.
The Rune Sovereign exhaled slowly. The white light faded from his eyes. He looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers once, and a wide genuine smile spread across his face.
"So this is what lies beyond. I have finally achieved it."
He looked up. Out. Past the void. Past the multiverse. Past everything that could be seen, measured, or named. He looked at something that was not there yet. Not here.
"My legacy has been set in motion. I’ll leave the game running for whoever comes next."
"A new journey awaits me. So long, multiverse."
A new fold of space opened around him. He stepped forward into it and was gone.
The memory ended.
---
The thin man ripped his hand back from the tree and exhaled hard. His seals had completely stopped spinning. They hung motionless around his shoulders, as if they too were stunned by what they had just witnessed.
He stood very still for a long time, heart still pounding and his body trembling.
I just watched a Paragon break through to whatever exists beyond the multiverse... and it was only a memory.
His breathing came hard and uneven.
The pressure from that single step... if I had been anywhere near the real event, I would have died. Not a temporary death. Not something I could come back from with resources and time. I would have been completely erased. Wiped out of existence like the void in that memory.
He pressed both hands to his chest, trying to steady the residual fear still crawling through his body.
’He broke through. Right in front of me. The exact moment he transcended. The moment he left this level of existence and stepped into whatever comes after. And before he left, he said he would leave the game running.’
’The game... this ruin, the suppression, the competition, the filter... all of it. It’s his Legacy Tomb disguised as a game he set in motion before walking away.’
His throat felt dry.
’A Paragon. I just watched a Paragon ascend beyond the multiverse. And he left his work behind. Left it running. Left it open for whoever was lucky enough or skilled enough to find it.’
He looked at the tree in front of him — at the dense, ancient runes covering its bark and the sheer depth of meaning packed into every surface.
’This is a Paragon-level ruin. And I am standing inside it. The aura it released that drew us here was suppressed. Kept small and weak on purpose so that people like us could walk straight in.
If it had released a fraction of its true strength... the Top Ten Races would have claimed it before we even knew it existed. Other Paragons would have sealed it off. We would never have seen it. Never touched it. Never known it was here.’
We got lucky. Insanely, ridiculously lucky.
He looked down at his hands. They were still shaking. He clenched them into fists until the trembling stopped.
’But here I am. Standing in it. Breathing its air. Reading its walls.’
’The stakes are no longer about treasure or inheritance. The stakes are about surviving a place built by something that makes Multiversals look like insects. And I cannot send a single word to anyone outside. No message. No signal. No way to tell anyone what I found or where I am.’
’Whatever happens here from now on... happens in complete silence.’
He forced the seals around his shoulders to start moving again. They felt heavier than before, as if they too carried the weight of what they had seen.
"Alright then," he muttered to no one. "Let’s see what the rest of this game board looks like."
He turned and started walking deeper into the forest without looking back. Behind him, the sounds of fighting in the outer layer continued, but they were already growing distant and unimportant.
Not far from him, two independent Advanced-tier Multiversals who had formed a temporary partnership were arguing in low voices while moving between the trees. Both had entered through separate gaps and found each other in the outer forest. Neither trusted the other fully. But two sets of eyes were better than one.
"I’m telling you, the center is where the real inheritance is," the taller one said. His stride was long, impatient. "Every strong rune I’ve found is pointing that way."
"And I’m telling you it could also be where the strongest traps are," the shorter one replied. His pace was measured. Careful. "We don’t know enough yet."
"We know the outer forest is already turning into a slaughterhouse. I’d rather take my chances deeper than stay here and get jumped by desperate idiots."
The shorter one went quiet for a few steps. Then he nodded once.
"Fine. But if something feels wrong, we pull back immediately."
They moved in silence for a while. Then the taller one stopped abruptly. His hand shot out and pressed against a thick trunk. His eyes went unfocused. A residual intent had caught him.
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