Looking at the empty nothingness that surrounded my body, I felt a slight tug on my consciousness before my real self was forcefully slapped back to my body. Before I could realise, my perspective changed from that of a third person back to my own eyes, indicating that Bonger deemed that all the danger was gone, turning my predator's mindset off.

Just a quick look at the postal tool of mine confirmed the one guess I had as I watched the entire world around my body disappear into nothingness of the chaos.

I didn't get even a single point of experience from this action!

While just the fact that I managed to get rid of the only group that could pose any danger to me on my way to taking full control over the entire heavenly city was already a good thing, when I saw the chaos of abyss eradicating every last bit that world essence that this place had, I couldn't help but hope that I would still get some levels from this mass slaughter!

Yet in the end, after killing those few enemies that managed to get the honours of dying from my hand rather than being wiped by this foreign substance, I still managed to raise the entire two levels!

But rather than being happy about this notation and the confirmation that indeed, with the system upgrade the increase of attribute points per level changed from twenty to entire hundred per level, I had to shift my attention back to my current situation.

As it was quite a peculiar one.

With the area influenced by the rune and protected by the influence of the orb that still shone above my head, I was safe from the lethal chaos of everything that was outside. Or to be frank, there was no outside!

Looking around, no matter what direction I cast my sight at, I was surrounded by nothing but complete darkness. Unable to look down on the runes in worry that they would influence, I had no way of learning what kind of master rune the carvings of entropy created. While I could easily recreate the moves that my body made while under the influence of the predator's mindset ability, after all the shifting they did during the activation, it would be of no use at all!

Did that mean that I was confined to this tiny space protected by the extremely condensed ball of energy above me for the rest of my life, which would mean for as long as this rune could fend against the onslaught of chaotic elements trying to tear it apart?

What is this bullshit!

I didn't come here to end my life as the hero who freed Monica's folk from the control of their enemies! I never considered them my allies in the first place, and now I was supposed to pay with my life for their freedom?

BULLSHIT!

With my mind spinning as fast as it could, it still took me a long while to figure out all the possible ways to save myself from this prison of nothingness.

In the first place, what was this area before the chaos made a short work of it?

It couldn't be an illusion, that was certain. Was it something akin to my own private space where my stronghold was located then?

If that were to be the case, then how was this kind of space made in the first place?

Reaching for the memories of when I created my stronghold in the first place, despite how much they were colored in the emotion of pain and fear, I could still make out the single item that I used to set it up.

Mana core.

To be exact, it turned out to be a parasitic mana core that drained all the area from all its magical energy, including all the forms of life that were present there. But how was that energy used later on?

With my current advancements, my body was capable of holding almost triple as much of mana as the current potential of the mana core, meaning that as long as I would figure out a way to use it properly, then either recreating this place or at least, connecting it back to the heavenly city should be possible!

Obviously, the first idea I had was to create a portal that would connect me back to my tower… Yet with no idea where I was and how would that portal connect to the outside world, using it would mean risking jumping between one emptiness of chaos to another.

With no portal seeds on hand, I was only left with the option of creating a subspace just as big as the one I destroyed! After all, after running through all the numbers, facts and information that I gathered over the course of the recent events, all those subdimensions appeared to be nothing more than bubbles of space created by infusing mana enough to push the chaos away, with a hole in the reality serving as the portal between two places!

Since I had no other idea what I could do to save myself, I amassed as much mana as I could in my hands. Closing my eyes, I retracted all the movements that I made ever since appearing in this place, slowly repeating them in the reverse order and reverse direction. Wherever I saw my body turning around clockwise for about ninety degrees, I turned anticlockwise just as much, before moving to the next step.

Only after painting a map of all the movements that I did in this world before ending up in the middle of this rune, I directed myself to where I believed the entry point to this subspace was and sent all the energy condensed in my hands throught the barrier of the safe space protected by the shining orb to the chaos of the outside!

Step by step, despite my eyes being closed, I could feel the space itself forming within the boundaries of the beam of energy that I was pushing forward. It appeared that the concept of the space itself was non-existent in this naturally chaotic place!

Even though staying here and studying the properties of this place could allow me to further my understanding of the fabric of the world, seeing how the shine of the orb above my head was slowly dimming, I knew that the time I had was severely limited.

Step by step, this beam of my energy, far more condensed than what the mana core could use to create way bigger space that I was currently making, was inching closer to the point where I was sure that I first appeared in this ancestral land.

Click.

Finally, I felt the entire beam of my energy stabilising, as if it suddenly found something to rest itself on. With the pressure exerted on my energy suddenly lessening as if the borders of the real world shared the burden of holding the chaos back, I could expand it to the size of the proper tunnel, before turning it into a perfect sphere, stretching between the locking point and my current position.

Right in time.

Feeling the magical orb above my head shaking under the suddenly increased pressure of the chaos, I bet everything on this one card that I just created and leapt from the safe space of the rune towards the spherical subspace!

As soon as my body, the source of the energy that continued to reinforce the influence of the orb disappeared, the entire rune broke apart. In less than it would take me to blink my eyes, rather than exploding or going away in any other grand way, what used to be my prison, simply vanished, as if space itself expired in that area!

Yet that didn't mean that I was completely safe!

The moment I entered the newly created subspace, my body instantly was attacked by the barrage of chaotic magic, wrecking the chaos in the entire area. There was no gravity, no matter, no anything in this place! Only the raw magical energy and entropy, making up this strange place.

Since I wasn't willing to risk my safety any longer, I used my standard propelling technique, a set of powerful shockwaves to move my body towards the connecting point between this subspace and the real world.

Yet what I didn't expect, was that this sudden appearance of order in this otherwise chaotic environment would have such insane results!

While I still managed to push myself to a breakneck speed, floating through nothingness towards the safety of the real world, the chain reactions started by my spell, disturbed the balance of the mix of energy and entropy.

In a flash, just a bit of magic was pushed behind my original position, resulting in the barrier of the world suddenly giving up! As if air escaping from a balloon, all the energy started whizzing away, slowing down my speed. Yet the second the shrinking space pushed one of the entropy clogs that for some strange reason refused to properly mix with the energy towards the chaos, the last barrier that protected me from the influence of the abyss was broken!

As if the entropy was a matter and the abyss of chaos was the antimatter, the ensuing explosion ripped this entire safety bubble of subspace apart, leaving me in a wild whirlwind of clogs of energy and entropy freely diffusing into the chaos!

Yet despite all the hell that was appearing from all sides, my body didn't stop moving towards the rift of the world! Just by comparing the speed at which this subspace was deteriorating into nothingness, even when taking the acceleration caused by the ongoing eruptions of entropy meeting its counterpart wouldn't change the fact that I would get through the border of the world before this entire place would return to nothingness!

Yet the lack of stable barrier meant that nothing protected me from the very thing, that Bonger had to sacrifice over two weeks of its entire strength to save me from!

While still flowing towards the first, my mind was invaded by a thing that I couldn't explain. It felt as if my consciousness suddenly stretched to an unimaginable distance, forming its own subspace within this chaos.

At this point, I could swear that I saw the birth of the entire universe, its growing stage, the formation of giant space-dusts, condensation of the first galaxies, appearances of the first supernovas and ultimately black holes.

As the energy still within my core was draining like crazy to pull my consciousness back in itself, I watched the first planets formed, a life appeared, countless civilisation rose only to fall a split of a second later in the onslaught of the forces they attempted to tame yet failed to control.

In this state, the time flew for me in all directions and at all speeds. At one point, I could watch the slow and sensual act of lovemaking between two beings that looked like a mix of earthy octopus and aria. A fraction of a second later, I was a witness of the entire history of a certain kingdom of ant-looking species, that fallen to the invasion of the undescribable blobs of organic matter from the outer space.

Yet by the time that I somehow, maybe due to my high intelligence, started to make any sense of what was happening, everything disappeared, replaced by the familiar, stable sky and the peak of the mountain with a nice mansion on its top.