861 Ten Years 2 (2/2)

His massive sword was glistening with a silver-bronze light, or it would have been, if it wasn't coated in violet blood. As for his arms that held it, they were ridden with scary looking veins that were a product of their over-exertion. But, he still swung time and time again, carrying a weapon that had reached thousands of jin as though it was a feather.

As he swept through the red-scaled bodies, he could feel the restrictions on his body about to allow him to break through to the essence gathering level. But, this would only make the situation worse for him.

After he broke through to the meridian formation stage, Dyon felt that the ban on wills and energy were lifted. In accordance with that, the beasts also became fiercer. If this continued, the gap would only grow larger!

By now, it was well into the tenth year and Dyon had collapsed to his knees.

In the outside world, although ten years weren't much in the face of martial warriors, it was still too long for someone they assumed wasn't a fighter. So, many assumed that Dyon had overestimated himself, forging forward when he should have cut his losses and continued to the fourth trial.

Although the rankings only held a 100 names per trial type, for a total of 35 – 5 trails to each of the 7 tier levels – there were other methods for checking on names not worthy of making the top 100 in their generation.

The Epistemic Tower Inner World was separated into 100 corners, each of these corners corresponding to one of the 100 quadrants. However, the Celestial Deer Corner has been closed off for millennia, thus not allowing people to use it as an exit to find out where the tower was located. This was actually another function of the Tower Key, the ability to decide who was allowed to use the teleportation formations of your corner.

That aside, that was only 1 function of the corner. The other was a much more subtle ability.

Currently, the corner of the Celestial Deer Quadrant was covered in a massive fog formation. This was a formation that appeared at a corner every time the Key switched owners and it would not disappear until the key wielder completed their trials.

The purpose of this fog formation was to keep intruding Universes out until the key wielder gained the ability to defend their territory. For example, the Kitsune-Shruti Quadrant was covered in this very same foggy formation because Saru had yet to exit her trial. The only reason Ri was allowed in was because she was allowed in by a Duke level character of that universe, as that was the minimum status needed to do such a thing.

The problem was that even after ten years, the barrier still had not disappeared. It was no wonder they thought Dyon had foolishly died.