Chapter 685: Rune of Devouring

Third Person’s POV

Understanding the situation, Ethan began carefully surrounding the vortices with strands of pure soul power.

He deliberately avoided stimulating his dark mana any further.

He already knew what would happen if he allowed his mana to directly enter the vortices.

It would only be twisted apart and devoured.

Instead, he relied on his soul sense.

One strand after another extended toward the chaotic vortexes.

Soon, those strands began glowing with a faint silver light.

The two poisons were fundamentally different from ordinary living beings.

They possessed powerful instincts, but they didn’t appear to possess a definite soul of their own.

That gave Ethan an opportunity.

His soul sense slowly expanded around them, forming spherical layers of soul power that attempted to isolate and contain the two opposing forces.

But as he did so, Ethan discovered another shocking property of the vortices.

He could feel the strange twisting force field they generated.

And when his soul sense came into contact with it, even his stealthy silvery soul sense originating from his Devil bloodline began to suffer.

Thin strands of his soul power were being slowly twisted and dragged toward the vortices by the force field, and were finally devoured like his mana.

Ethan gritted his teeth.

Yet instead of retreating, he focused even harder.

Every portion of his mind concentrated on the strange force field.

He tried to understand the principle behind the twisting force field the poisons possessed.

He sensed how it twisted his power.

How it pulled everything toward the vortexes.

How the devouring force began forming.

And most importantly, how it was being created and maintained.

Little by little, Ethan began to understand it.

It was extremely difficult.

The force field seemed simple at first glance, yet countless subtle changes were occurring within it.

Every rotation of the vortex altered the direction of the force.

Every collision between the blue and violet poisons changed its intensity.

Ethan continued observing.

Time seemed to gradually lose its meaning.

He didn’t know how long he had been studying the phenomenon.

Eventually, his almost dried up soul power began forming tiny vortices of its own.

They were vastly smaller and weaker than the poisonous vortices, but they rotated in the opposite direction, resisting their pull.

Ethan’s eyes lit up slightly.

He had begun to reproduce the fundamental principle behind their force field.

An unknown amount of time passed.

His comprehension of the strange devouring force continued deepening.

Eventually, Ethan made another attempt.

He carefully infused a portion of his soul sense with his dark mana and directed it toward the force field.

He expected the same thing to happen.

He expected the dark mana to be twisted apart and devoured.

But surprisingly, this time it held itself.

The dark mana remained intact within his soul sense.

Ethan’s eyes widened, and a surge of exhilaration immediately spread through his consciousness.

He had finally found a way to resist the devouring force and overcome this crisis.

A way to interfere with the battle without allowing his own power to become nourishment for the two poisons.

If he could fully understand and utilize this principle, he might finally be able to end this battle before the two forces completely destroyed his body.

But just as Ethan was about to continue, something suddenly changed.

The enormous dark crystal that served as the anchor of his mana dimension began to tremble.

HUMMMM!

Ethan’s attention immediately shifted toward it.

A strange fluctuation spread throughout the dim gray world.

Then, on the surface of the enormous crystal, a huge dark rune resembling a dark bottomless vortex slowly began to emerge. ℯℯ𝘭.

Ethan’s expression changed.

He had never seen that rune before.

Yet for some reason, its presence felt strangely familiar.

His silvery soul sense instinctively extended toward the crystal, moving closer to investigate the sudden phenomenon.

The instant it came into contact with the dark spiral rune—

BOOM!

A dazzling rainbow-colored light suddenly erupted.

The light completely overwhelmed Ethan’s vision.

For an instant, he could see nothing, but his surroundings slowly became clear.

When his vision finally returned, Ethan found himself standing within his mind space.

And directly before him floated the dim, mysterious Eterna Nexus.

Ethan was shocked by the sudden shift in his consciousness.

Only a moment ago, he had finally begun to grasp the strange twisting force field generated by the two opposing poison vortices.

He had been completely focused on understanding its structure, yet before he could react, a series of incomprehensible events had suddenly occurred and forcibly pulled his consciousness away.

First, there had been the mysterious spiral rune.

And now...

The seven-colored crystal that had remained dormant for the past year had finally awakened.

Ethan’s thoughts raced as he stared at the familiar yet mysterious Eterna Nexus floating before him.

Before he could make sense of the situation, however, a notification resembling a game-like panel suddenly appeared before his eyes.

[Congratulations, Host, on fulfilling the first requirement out of the three requirements required for creating your own Dark World.]

Ethan stared at the notification.

For a moment, he was simply stunned that this seemingly useless crystal had finally awakened.

But then he read the contents again.

His eyes twitched.

The words sounded so metaphorical and philosophical that he couldn’t help but feel a faint sense of exasperation.

’Creating my own Dark World?’

He could roughly guess that this was related to his dark mana manual, the Eternal Eclipse Dark Sovereign Manual.

But the phrase creating your own Dark World left him completely confused.

What exactly did that mean?

Was it referring to the dark mana dimension inside his body?

Or was it something entirely different?

Ethan had no answer, so he didn’t waste any time brainstorming a question he didn’t have an answer for.

Bracing himself, he continued reading.

[You have successfully learned the faintest trace of the first Law of Darkness, the Law of Devouring, causing me to awaken from my indefinite sleep.]

[Host might not know, as I did not explain it in detail before, but Eterna Nexus requires Law Essence to sustain itself rather than simple elemental energy.]