Even though the cold didn't affect me, I could still sense just how slow everything moved here from it. I followed Charon, going one way. Each race seemed to choose a different direction. In so doing, we would be less likely to overlap. Secretly, the girls were already in Persephone to keep them safer.

I tried using my >, and I intuitively felt that there was something hidden nearby.

"This way," I told Charon.

"Why do you think that?" He asked.

"I have a skill for finding hidden things," I responded.

We walked for about thirty minutes until we found a small village submerged in snow. The houses were made of simple wood and stone, and it didn't take long to reach the end. I went into one of the abandoned buildings and crushed a floorboard. Beneath it, there were crystals.

I used the smartwatch to pull up a holographic projection of the information on these crystals. This, apparently, was used to record found items. I decided this was enough for the angels.

They were crystalized MP recovery potions and earth energy recovery potions, which each restore ten thousand points!

"I guess you did find something small," Charon said, taking a few. "Since you found it, we'll split seventy-thirty."

I stored some in the watch and some in my belt.

I led us to more towns with small treasures hidden for the rest of the day. The gains included ingredients, artifacts, spell books below rank D-, and skill books I didn't need. They were all in Persephone.

In a larger town with more intricate buildings, I felt my earrings get hot. I found it was a reaction to the hidden treasure. A jade-colored light flashed, changing the color to the same.

Immediately, I appraised it. The broken attribute was removed, replaced with "fixing."

It could now, per appraisal, appraise and scan objects. Its knowledgebase was the same as mine. It could also steal other databases. I quickly thought about the pin and watch. When I did so, they were scanned by the earrings.

"Hello," Pristine said. "Ask me any question, and I will try to respond appropriately."

"Thank you. I'm good for now."

"My awareness and conscience aren't fully recovered yet, but I can still answer basic inquiries. Otherwise, I shall remain dormant."

Our next stop was a large graveyard.

"You keep coming into contact with soul refiners," Amon said. "I'll have to train you to withstand them."

"What's here?" I asked.

"There's an artifact causing the souls from around this world to be trapped here. Usually, the souls shatter and leave. This object, however, may have been created by a devil. It traps the souls around here," Amdusias said.

I decided to tell Charon. "There are trapped souls here. Do you have anything to contain them with?"

I had some objects that may have helped, but I didn't want to use them if I didn't have to.

"Now, but you might. We found this earlier, but it's more useful to you," he said, tossing me a piece of bread. "Eat it."

[domain congealing has passed 60%. Domain function unlocked. Unlocked soul trapping: souls within a ten-meter radius will be stuck and unable to move]

"It helped my domain, but I still can't trap them."

"Too bad. The energy here is really nice, so let's take a rest. Maybe, we can trade with the ghosts. They may like these souls. I'll be in my coffin," he said, taking out a coffin from his neck, similar to mine.

Once he was asleep, I quickly asked for Persephone's assistance to move the souls to my world. I thought they'd be some help.

"The souls have been transferred. Barrier level one is complete. System creation 25% completed," she responded.

The couple million souls seemed to have some effect. I tried inquiring further, but I was told it's a secret. I finally found the object.

"Interesting," Seere said, looking at the stick in front of me. "The power here is truly on the level of that created by a rank-one devil."

I couldn't even appraise it, but my earrings could.

"As a god-level object, it's natural for it to work for rank-one items now that it's fixing itself," Andromalius explained.

Item: soul trapping stick (broken)

Description: created by a devil. Traps all souls of the world within a small radius. Souls can be controlled at will. Without the effect of the world's core, its effectiveness decreased. At full power, can slightly interfere with reincarnation.

I put it in my spiritual world for later before looking around. There was nothing else significant, except that the soil had death energy in it.

"What is it?" Charon asked, surprising me. I didn't realize he awoke.

"The souls disappeared, and the soil seems to have some death energy in it."

"This item itself is already outside of my comprehension. I felt something was off. Here, let me help with the energy." He waved his hand, and the death energy left the ground, forming a high-tier DE recovery potion.

"Take it. I have no need for it," he said. "I'm going back to sleep for another hour."

Thinking about my domain's functions, I decided to ask my daughters about theirs.

"We both have the same one," Krystal began to explain.

"It's tied to our race," Krystal continued. "It's the domain of darkness. Since we completely congealed ours, in a ten-meter radius, we can control the amount of light and darkness."

Krystal continued. "at 50%, we could see through everything, 60% remove or add light, 70% control the eyes of others, 80% increases our power in darkness slightly, 90% create illusions in the darkness, 100% absolute control of the darkness around us."

"Thank you for your explanation," I said.

I then quickly returned, so as not to alert Charon. I wondered what my domain would be like fully congealed.

The next day, the two of us continued our exploration. Even though this world was considered small, at my speed, it would still take a very long time to traverse the entire space.

There was nothing too exciting during that day, but we did see cities. There, the architecture and other aspects were much more advanced. There were even skyscrapers with over one hundred floors! They still didn't have widespread electricity, though.

The following day, I had to convince Charon not to look for the girls.

"Why don't we steal a little from the angels?" he asked me.

"But we've found so many treasures together. I think I can continue using my treasure sense, and we could have a much greater profit than the angels. What little treasures could they have possibly found?"

"True," he responded. "I like your way of thinking. Let's continue and only attack them at the end."

I agreed to his words, and we again set off through the barren wasteland. For the first few hours, it looked like we were traversing over what was once an ocean. Below us, there was nothing of interest. We could look through it for sunken kingdoms, but my treasure sense didn't go off until midday.

Finally, I found something. It was roughly seven kilometers below us, and I didn't think > would be enough.

"I'll do it. The reward had better be good," Charon said, somewhat annoyed.

He then took some blood into his hand, and, using it like a laser, he drilled a narrow hole down. He next proceeded to move the whole until a circle was completed. The area inside was barely enough for the two of us, and I didn't know how he would carve it out. To my surprise, he pressed down on a ring on his finger.

The ring emitted a faint glow before releasing small blood-red orbs into the sky. These orbs immediately plummeted to the bottom of the circle before a loud rumbling broke out as if it was an earthquake.

During the shaking, the ice inside the circle completely melted, and the newly-formed water instantly evaporated into the air.

"What was that?" I asked after seeing such a display of power.

"It was difficult to pull off. I had to combine a bunch of skills and spells: blood laser, blood bomb, store spell, directional mana channeling, and others. I really hope I find something I like down there."

"I've never even heard of those skills!" I exclaimed.

"I do have an arc mage class, so it's understandable. The way I activated the spells and blew up only the inside was due to precise mana control methods."

I did know a little about how the mana flow was targeted towards a specific direction. I was talking about blood laser and blood bomb, as well as the other vampiric spells he didn't mention.

I chose not to inquire further as we quickly descended. When we were almost at the bottom, I could feel the heat rise slightly.

"It seems like a sub-dimensional space has survived. Roberto, get ready," Charon said.

As soon as we reached the bottom, I, too noticed that the space was different. We were no longer beneath a sea.

"I bet a god's artifact preserved this place. He must have cared about it a lot to use so much power. If we left it alone for a few hundred years, we wouldn't have to fight. Alas, here comes our enemy."

"I'm ready," I replied.

We both used similar means to attack, with vampiric skills such as twilight ambush and midnight terror and massacre. Our enemies had the body of a horse and the head of a lion. I couldn't get appraisal to work, but the earrings were able to tell me they were called Tasseleons.

Their main attacks, according to the information, usually relied on purified sun energy; however, there was no sun remaining. They foolishly tried to use brute force to surpass us. The highest strength stat couldn't have been over four hundred. The synergy with both of us using our skills together in the dark easily overshadowed all roughly six hundred of them.

"Done," I soon commented.

"Yes, now let's retrieve the treasure in this place," Charon said and instantly began searching.

After a while, he finally called out, "I'll be taking this."

I mainly wanted to know what it was, so he explained the orb contained life energy—it could protect life in this place for a few hundred more years. He knew how valuable it was and wanted to sell it. There was also a large concealment formation set up to block others from knowing about this place.

Since I found it first, I wanted to look around for other treasures. It was much harder as, unlike in the dungeon, the monsters didn't disappear.

"Why don't you just take their essence?"

"Because there are far too few to do anything with," I responded. I had, however, taken their souls.

"True. I guess there wasn't much in it for you. I'll teach you the spell bloody fire as compensation since you found this place."

He tossed a pendant to me and explained this stored the image of the spell. I injected some blood into it, and my blood world reacted, stretching out thin strands towards this unknown spell. I was even more surprised when I actually learned it. It wasn't a fire but a conflagration!

Blood Essence Conflagration

Level: 1

Rank: SS

DE use: 5000

Description: with a proper setup, ignite all within a five-hundred-meter area, including their blood's essence. Doing so increases the temperature of the flame proportionally.

It was a very confusing spell, as, in order to use it, a special magic circle must be set up beforehand, covering the entire area of effect. It must also have been written in blood. Otherwise, it was very powerful. The more enemies burnt, the higher the temperature and destructive power rose! It still couldn't compare to my fire from hell, though.

"Thank you. I learned it," I replied.

"That was fast. This transmission method is usually a lot slower than a simple spell book, but you must have great comprehension. What class did you choose?"

"It's a secret," I replied.

"I won't force you, but it must enhance your wisdom by many times to be able to comprehend this."

I didn't know why the blood world interfered, but I hoped to find out sometime. I didn't dwell on the topic as we returned to the icy, dead world.

Now that we were back, I could see ancient buildings covered in ice directly in front of us. It must have been the home for those Tasseleons.

"There's nothing left here," I told Charon.

"This expensive God's artifact is enough to make this small expenditure worth it," Charon replied. "If I'm ever exploring other worlds, I'll take you along. How about it?"

"Sure," I replied. I had gained a lot from this trip, and there were still eleven in-world days remaining.

It took us a little longer to return to the surface, but we eventually did and continued journeying towards the next continent until dawn the following morning.

"We've reached the next continent," I said.

"Finally. There had better be something good here."

"I hope your right," I replied.

We, again, came across towns and villages. In so doing, we found small rewards. In one city, we found a bunch of weapons. There must have been hundreds of thousands of swords, spears, axes, and other instruments hear! Many were ranked between F- and D-, but there were at least a thousand D and D+ ranked ones. Unfortunately, the best they had were twenty C- weapons.

"I expected more from this place," Charon commented. "There's not a single A- graded weapon, let alone higher tiers. You can take the little ones, and I'll take five C-."

I agreed and swept them all away into my spiritual world. Once back in the dungeon, I would combine those with a rank below D.

The next major city we went to looked different from the others. It was as if a battle had taken down all of the buildings, leaving only rubble in its remains. Charon found and kept a B+ ranked trident, and I got three B- ranked bows, though it was all that was left.

"It's getting better. We may be getting closer to the richer sections."

"But, Charon, are you sure there are still treasures left there? Wouldn't they have fled?"

"More than likely, if they knew this was approaching, the strongest would have confiscated them long ago. The great catastrophe was at least a few million years before the ore mining. It must have been great before they lost their energy."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"All unrefined ores die along with the world, so, even if we tried, we would be unable to mine even the likes of orichalcum or caltreon."

I learned something new about the death of the world, and we continued our journey. He was right, as the next place we arrived at was a pure-gold palace surrounded by a ditch and high fences.

Charon was upset that there was nothing inside, so he repeated a similar process from yesterday and burnt all of the gold. I, however, could still use this on Earth. I immediately took the liquid and shaped it into bars with my mana, each weighing one kilogram. Each would sell for about $45,000, and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of them.

"Why did you save the gold?" Charon asked, perplexed.

"Remember, the world I currently reside in has not undergone the great catastrophe. As such, gold is valuable currency there. I was going to use it to fortify some defenses."

"Good luck with that. A few decades later, no one will even look at gold. New ores would be the only thing worth mentioning, even if gold stays just as rare."

We traveled along a half-circle road, spanning multiple kilometers. We found two more empty golden fortresses, and Charon explained it was most likely all owned by a single family.

After that, there was a small river we had to cross. It seemed peaceful, so I was unsure why so many different forces needed to adventure together. Wouldn't just a single representative of each race be enough?

I asked Charon regarding this matter.

"It will get harder soon if they aren't awaiting us already. There are other monsters who traverse these worlds, looking to be the only race left standing. We're here for the loot before that happens, but strong warriors are needed to deter interested parties. Take Great Hook for an example. Even though few races could stand this cold, there was one race who thrived in it. They invaded the dead world and tried to start a colony to threaten other, nearby worlds. Unluckily for them, the previous world's owner was at least rank-three devil. They disintegrated the entire world. If they weren’t so strong, the only other way would have been with one of hell's supreme fires. No one knows how to fully control those, but just a small spark could have finished it. Luckily, we knew who did it. If we didn't, the entire universe might go searching to kill the fire's commander."

"What are these fires?" I inquired, even though I already knew.

"They are an existence that surpasses natural, eternal, and divine laws alike. I only know a little since I once came in contact with a master who could summon a whiff of smoke from one of them. Only Devils really know about what they truly are. Even my masters don't have any idea. With your strength, just forget I even mentioned them."

I knew, then, that I could not tell Charon about my control over one of the fires. It also made me wonder about how powerful they were compared to the fire source of the dungeon, especially if their use surpassed all three types of laws! Even the dungeon doesn't touch on divine laws!

As we continued down the path, I soon realized I had jinxed us with my previous question.

I knew this because of the strange change in scenery. I knew there shouldn't be grass in this world, but, inexplicably, I was surrounded by an endless field. The sky was pure blue, not a cloud in sight. The sun was beating down, but it wasn't too bright, nor was it too hot or cold. It was only that Charon wasn't beside me that made me come to the realization about where I actually was.

This wasn't a separate space, as I couldn't use my skill to leave it. It also felt different. It was peaceful, and I felt like I wanted to remain here enjoying the serenity. I used some water to look at my reflection in an attempt to stop those thoughts. When I saw myself, I was surprised that I had no shoes on! The other clothes were all soul-bound items, so they were on me, but those clothes that were normal didn't follow me here. Even the smartwatch from Gabriel disappeared!

I was really worried, once I discovered I couldn’t view my status without using the earrings!

With so many restrictions, how would I be able to leave this place? I worried I may be trapped here forever. I knew I had to quickly figure a way out, but I didn't know what to do.