While turning to leave, Darien noticed sothing his inventory item had picked up.
It was the Dungeon Chest of Forlorn Asylum.
Apparently, he had t all the requirents to acquire it.
Inside was the Dungeon Key, glinting in a blue mist, but the warrior didn't reach for it right away.
'Not this ti,' he thought.
The key could grant him access to the sub-dungeon, a deeper nightmare compared to what he had just faced.
And since he was far stronger now than last ti, Darien knew the trial would be very easy.
But he wasn't interested now, as he wanted to return quickly to Lanthold.
Sadly, the Dungeon Key would fade away the mont he crossed the bridge back into the real world.
Tap~tap.
The footsteps of the other aspirants echoed toward him as Darien exited the dungeon chamber into the wide peristyle.
They stopped short, staring in disbelief as the boy and his moon walked calmly through the field of corpses.
"G-gulp… D-did he really do all this?"
"Impossible… there's not even a scratch on him…"
"No way. He soloed the BOSS…"
Darien paid them little attention. He was rather disappointed with the invaluable drops from the bunch.
Life Cores were his main profit alone. Fortunately, he could now absorb far more than before, having ford an Energy Core of his own.
Sighing, he strode past the stunned warriors to leave the dungeon.
"Get yourselves new armour and blades. You lot look impoverished," he told them.
The air slled fresh and clean, not of blood and rot, as Darien reappeared before the bridge.
Usually, a few people or even a small congregation would be gathered near the bridge to cheer and welco returning aspirants.
But this ti, Darien was greeted only by a little boy and a gaunt, half-asleep dog.
The anticlimax made him sigh again.
He feared that once the group he had left behind erged, they might swarm him with praise or beg him to join their guild.
So, before that could happen, Darien saved himself from further embarrassnt by getting himself a portal back to Lanthold.
Once he arrived back at his holy inn, Darien made sure to rest properly before doing anything burdenso—like using the Discord Sphere again.
When he revealed the sphere, he noticed that one of the embedded gems had begun to glow while the others remained dim and silent.
It was the blue one with three engraved wavy lines.
Darien didn't need anyone to tell him that symbolized Water.
If there had ever been any lingering doubt in his mind, this alone cleared it completely.
Focusing on the Discord Sphere, the boy's vision dissolved, and the world around him flashed as he left reality and entered the Cosmic Realm again.
The stars, the swirling canvas of nebulae, and the auroras of galaxies all remained.
The energy in the air was still thick, dense, and magical.
Darien still couldn't believe he had access to such a magnificent place. Every breath he took here reminded him how unreal it felt.
He had promised himself he would explore the Cosmic Realm, and so he did.
Moving from star to star, he felt like a supre god, overseeing countless worlds and holding the fate of the multiverse within his hands.
He wandered through areas that gave illusions of himself, and places where ti looped him every three seconds, leaving him confused.
He also reached a place where he could glide effortlessly without walking.
But while he was appreciating the beauty, having a pleasant ti, Darien reached an edge where he noticed that the Cosmic Realm was diminishing slowly.
"Once I fade, this place will begin to shrink piece by piece, until you are strong enough to take control of it yourself," he rembered the avatar saying.
That ant if he failed to get strong enough, the Cosmic Realm would eventually reduce to inexistence.
Darien knew he couldn't waste any more of his ti dancing around the place.
By becoming powerful enough, he would serve as the fuel for the Cosmic Realm, its energy source that could retain and eventually re-expand it.
Failure wouldn't an his death, but it would mark the end of his journey to claim the powers of this strange god who had chosen him.
And no matter how weakened that god might have been, a Primordial was still a Primordial.
Finding his way back to the center of the cosmic canvas, the warrior settled down amidst the constellations.
Before long, he achieved the silence and rhythm he sought, focusing all his will on learning his next elent—Fire.
It wasn't just a coincidence that his personal weapon resonated with that affinity. That was a reflection of his very soul.
Darien's most attuned elent was the most chaotic and destructive of them all.
It awakened within him effortlessly, far faster than his cultivation of Water, as though Fire had been waiting for this very mont.
At the instant of success, the boy's eyes blazed open in fla.
[Congratulations! You have successfully magnified your Energy Core!]
[You get 2500XP!]
(Life Core LV.2)
(Elent: Water, Fire)
(Potence: Reactive)
Very quickly, the traits that ca with Fire surged through Darien's veins, but he wrestled the impulse down, mastering himself.
To test his newfound progress, he stood calmly and manifested a phantom clone within the cosmic realm.
The shadow duplicate stood obediently before him, and Darien exhaled a hot breath like a dragon.
FWOOOSHH! WHAM!
No skill was made or invoked, it was pure elental attunent as he unleashed a blast of fire that wiped out his clone in a gush of fla.
He summoned all three phantom clones next and continued the test, incinerating each with different maneuvers.
Darien didn't realize how much the entire activity drained him until dizziness ca, and the cosmic lights around him blurred.
Silently, his body fainted, and he was automatically returned to his inn room.
Waking up on the floor in the middle of the night, Darien grunted and picked up the Discord Sphere lying beside him.
Alas, a second gem now glowed—radiant red and pulsing with fiery potency.
There were still five more gems dim and silent, marking the remaining elents he needed to master before achieving the title of Omni-Mage.
From the teachings he recalled from the General Library, Darien knew the next elent to awaken was Wood, using his order of heritage.
He attempted to return to the cosmic realm, but exhaustion gripped his limbs too heavily to activate the golden artifact.
His futile efforts eventually threw him back into sleep again.
The next day, Darien repeated his actions.
His first step was placing a finger on his magical map, marking the nearest manifesting bridge.
When he arrived at Brynnfield, he found the place much livelier, with more aspirants gathered before the portal, each one ard, alert, and battle-ready.
They looked better equipped and more organized, their confident chatter hinting that it was likely a Rank 2 dungeon.
'I wonder how they know the rank so easily. The map doesn't show it,' Darien thought.
Judging by their numbers and sharp awareness, he knew he couldn't afford to flaunt his full power this ti.
Still, no matter how things played out, he promised the BOSS would be all his.
With the fire spells he had created, Darien joined the gathered groups to raid the Rank 2 low-tier dungeon, Undead Terrain.
He found himself using his sword more often than expected, slashing through waves of skeletons and wraiths, wiping out more enemies than anyone else.
Two warriors managed to reach the magical door before him, but when Darien stepped into the vast BOSS chamber, both were dead.
[You slayed a Rank 2 Dungeon BOSS!]
[You slayed a Rank 2 Monster. You gained 20,000 Skill Points.]
[You gained 2000 XP!]
Within re seconds, Darien felled the Skeleton Emperor using .
His new spell ford as a six-pointed hexagram within a circle on the floor, beneath the victim's feet.
Flas rose like chains, wrapping the undead monarch in a burning cage before collapsing inward, consuming it entirely into the center of the sigil.
"YAHHHHHHH!"
The warriors roared in triumph, their voices echoing through all the graveyards they cleared, but Darien didn't have the ti to linger and celebrate.
Outside, more people were gathered than last ti.
It seed that the harder the dungeon, the greater the welco that awaited the survivors.
Darien tried to move unseen to prevent unwarranted attention.
Everybody believed he had barely survived anyway, viewing him as an Interdiate-level Spearman, not knowing he was a world-ender.
Darien never doubted his aptitude with Fire. The elent obeyed him as if he had created it.
When he returned to his quiet room, he toyed with a small ball of fla between his fingers, watching the orange glow dance across his face.
But uncertainty soon crept in.
He wasn't sure if he was ready to harness all the remaining elents. And these were only the basics.
The mystic elents were said to be more destructive and overwhelming, the actual tools used for world destruction.
This thought reminded Darien of Vynsera and her warnings of the coming upheaval.
'She said she doesn't need protection. Why would I...?' he thought, conflicted.
Yet, it was possible Vynsera was just being biggety back then.
Her title as the Duke's daughter was protection enough.
Whether he was Darien or Jakob, he stood at the lowest rung of the social hierarchy.
It would be wise to attach himself to a faction out of necessity.
With a quiet exhale, he revealed the contact card Harwin had given him.
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