Their quick splint around Edit’s territory resulted in a slight complication: The resident Champion told him that if he went any further, he’d be leaving Edit’s domain, and entering Faith’s domain, a reality being responsible for maintaining the Realm of Divinity and controlling the flow of faith towards Gods.

  ‘There’s an energy, an affinity, and now a Reality Being, all named “Faith.” Be a little more creative guys!’

  Which meant Dei was literally on the other side of Edit’s domain, and now had to teleport through the entire thing to get back. When he’d spoken with The Champion in the center, it’d told him there were traps that would catch him if he used a long-distance jump, so he was in for a few surprises considering he was now further than he was before.

  Still, The Champion said it shouldn't be an issue if he just broke the formations and left again, as nothing within Edit’s domain would be able to contain him.

  He was tempted to explore Faith, but The Champion said its domain was… strange. Faith, like Edit, took its job very seriously, and played an active part in the lives of those under it, unlike Separation and Continuity; more than that, Edit was limited to a degree, while Faith remained free because of its tendency to not kill everything it touched.

  Altogether, while it would be fun to explore, it became frustratingly irrelevant when The Champion also said Faith, contrarily, had zero harvestable faith in its domain, so he couldn’t add to the donation of the Quarantine Champion. This was because it would infuse that energy into all physical material, changing the power systems to fit its own idea of what they should be and making the energy utilizeable to the mundane population, unlike everywhere else in the multiverse.

  True, he could go in and harvest rare resources to get a large amount of faith energy, but that would take actual centuries, so it was an untenable position.

  He could only sigh, resolving himself to skip out on this one mystery.

  He changed into his World that Walks form in preparation for the inevitable trouble that would stem from the Void traps, and warned his friends of what was to come.

  Reaching out to Earth, he teleported and… got a viscerally wrong sensation.

  He wouldn’t have felt it if he didn’t have several lessons from Void and his contract detailing common pitfalls, but he knew what caught him was more than a trap in his path, but a vortex pulling him backwards.

  Into Faith’s domain.

  ‘Ah shit.’

  In less than a blink, a new room opened, and Dei’s group was contained within a ritual circle drawn with eastern characters. An imposing man of seemingly Asian descent stood directly in front of them, wearing a red robe with a detailed insignia on its chest, his hands clasped behind his back, standing tall.

  There was nobody else in the room, but the walls were lined with candles emitting red light. Somehow, they produced a soothing sensation without even a hint of mana. It appeared that this room was a sealed place dedicated exclusively to rituals.

  “Demon!” the man declared, getting Dei’s attention. “Submit to my will, become subservient to me, and you shall be allowed to live. Resist, and I shall cripple your path for ten thousand years!”

  He blinked at the tiny man, who clearly only addressed Dei, not even glancing at the more mundane prisoners in the circle.

  The only confused question he could muster up was “Demon? What demon?”

  The man frowned, displeased that he hadn’t agreed instantly, but looked over him again.

  “This is true… I sense no demonic qi within you… a spirit beast then? No, only those with stagnant meridians shall be trapped within the array. Do not attempt to mask your presence, demon! Submit or perish!”

  Dei narrowed his eyes. He would have to escape and catch this guy if he wanted answers, but the magic system in this world was completely foreign, and he wasn’t sure if he could both defend himself and escape.

  An answer came to him easily: “Jacob, walk forward.”

  “Aye aye, boss!” Jacob said, saluting, and punched clean through the array without even a hint of resistance.

  No matter the laws of physics, Jacob would be the same everywhere.

  Dei’s Connections shot out, wrapping easily around the ritualist before he could even think…

  …And getting repelled? Something innate to the man held up to Connection, if only for a moment. No mana, but a sheer presence, one that felt sharp and violent.

  Dei hadn’t seen him draw his sword, but the gleam of it flashed around him, striking each Connection and altering their trajectory enough to open a small gap, through which he flung himself, landing on his feet and twirling around to throw a kunai towards Dei’s group, a scroll of parchment paper unfurling as it dragged behind the blade.

  He felt Perumah’s mind spike in awareness, clocking it as a genuine threat, responding before Dei could.

  The kunai vanished suddenly, and Perumah became exhausted under the strain of whatever she’d done.

  The man who’d captured them paled suddenly, as if that was the most terrifying aspect of what they’d done so far; he muttered, something Dei couldn’t understand, voice quivering. ‘It seems the array was providing a translation. Without it, we can’t hear what he’s saying.’

  Whatever resolve he held shattered, and the man crushed a talisman around his neck and turned around, fleeing through the door on the far wall.

  Dei tried to use Roving Gate combined with Meditation to follow, as he normally did, but the spell seemed to react strangely to the local laws.

  Rather than teleporting, cracks emerged from Dei in the direction he desired, catching up to the man and opening a portal directly to his back. Red cracks emerged from Perumah as well, following after the man for a moment before she startled at her own construct, and the spell went off-course.

  The ritualist turned, looking at the cracks Dei had opened in space, and screamed in abject horror. Dei reached out to grip him by the neck, when a force landed on his “Roving Gate,” collapsing it and causing all the Void mana to be withdrawn back into himself.

  Assessing his own condition, he noticed that Divine Balance made no attempt to adjust him to the local laws, it apparently being easier to fortify his own defenses against any lethality the environment offered.

  Perumah’s own spell was also reeled back in, and he saw that neither of them had lost any mana whatsoever.

  The sky exploded, and the four of them looked up to see a wizened old man standing atop a floating sword, sneering down at them.

  Dei felt something press down into him, and recognized it as the same force that shielded the ritualist earlier, only now infinitely more powerful- enough for him to parse through.

  It wasn’t just a Presence, it was a domain, a divine domain, and both had it. Specifically, it was a domain of the Sword affinity.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  ‘Are both of them Sword Gods? No, that’s insane. This is Faith’s domain, meaning every living creature is imbued with a fragment of Godhood, some clearly more than others.’

  The new player spoke through his domain, conveying his concepts.

  “Freakish beasts. From what hell did you crawl?”

  Dei used Meaningful to say “Not hell, another universe. You pulled us through the boundary, and we would like to go back.”

  The spell manifested as the cracks in the air, expanding from his throat, though he couldn’t feel it.

  The old man was filled with disgust, loathing, and rage. “Abomination. You cast your spiritual roots out into the air as if it were natural. Return to your abyss.”

  He raised his hand, and Dei sensed that this was not an attack he could ignore. Space warped, and a gargantuan, semi-translucent silver sword manifested behind him.

  Thadria, as usual when a fight occurred, grabbed Jacob and ran. Dei flew up to meet the blow before it could fully gain momentum, while Perumah unraveled and dove underground, doubtlessly searching for a prime moment to strike.

  Wrath flowed through him, shining vibrantly on his skin through the scars seared into him by Lani’s curse. Again, the old man sneered at the supposedly disgusting display of outward mana.

  Dei sent out a Soul Echo and winced for multiple reasons.

  One, it was the first time he’d tried as a Reaper, and now it was accompanied by a cold, silent, scream. Like the quiet thrashing of a weak, drowning man.

  And two, it sent out his “Spiritual roots” in all directions for… several miles.

  They were more subtle and faded than a typical spell, but visible nonetheless, and had an adverse affect on the terrain.

  Everywhere the roots touched, Dei felt himself drain the faith from, drawing the energy out of the world. He wasn’t completely sure what he’d done, but the souls he touched seemed to wilt.

  He saw now that he was at the tip of a short mountain placed near a much taller one, and his pulse reached all the way to the base of the one they were about to fight atop.

  When his roots touched the mundane people at the bottom, he immediately withdrew them when some started to drop.

  The ritualist that’d summoned them screamed, thrashing, as the faith was taken from him, and he was not alone. Many others on this mountaintop held varying degrees of faith, most of which Dei accidentally started to devour.

  All of this took place within the span of a half-second, and the elderly man’s eyes turned bloodshot instantly, enraged beyond anything Dei expected from such a mundane action.

  The old man’s domain was the only one unaffected, strong enough to resist Dei’s pull, but Dei was finally able to measure his strength, surprised to see it was around the three hundred to four hundred range- of a mundane System user, that is. Not someone like him.

  Though still dangerous.

  “YOU DARE TOUCH UPON THE DAO OF THE BAI JIANXIAN, THE WHITE SWORD IMMORTAL?! KNOW YOUR UNDOING, PARASITE!”

  “Ye-”

  The silver manifestation came down on Dei without warning, slamming into his raised hand and… failing to cut his skin.

  He felt it now as well, The World that Walks form used a similar system to Faith’s world, imbuing pure affinities and domains into his flesh to increase its defense.

  Bai’s “Sword Dao” (Sword affinity) faced off against Dei’s imbued “Flesh Dao” (Flesh affinity), and came up utterly lacking, considering it was an inheritance of the Leviathans.

  He was still slapped into the dirt though, rocketing into the side of the mountain, peeling away the earth and sending trees flying from where he’d carved a path.

  His Connections shot out, grabbing the tens of thousands of pounds of debris before they could land on the sprawling city of mundane folk beneath them.

  “MOTHERFUCKER! WATCH FOR COLLATERAL!” Dei shouted back up towards Bai, flinging the stones at him in a reverse landslide, following behind soon after.

  As Dei expected, the stones did little, sliced apart into dust in Bai’s mere presence, but was forced to raise his blade when Dei tried to bodyslam him.

  While Bai had yet to cut Dei, he used his sword- a real one this time- to redirect Dei’s momentum, flinging him off to the side.

  ‘Did I just get perried?’ he wondered, moments before crashing into the larger mountain and releasing an earthquake. He didn’t waste time on thinking, but this reality’s response to magic gave him a bad idea, and he cranked up his Hellish Divergence, releasing more chaos.

  As he expected, an incandescent series of roots began to grow outwards from him, grasping at the air and earth. Dei sensed a perpetual trickle of faith enter him, flowing towards Aloran’s construct.

  The roots didn’t dart out like his other spells, actually growing slowly, but they were also much more stable, not merely flowing back into Dei the moment his control over them waned.

  When Dei flew forward again, the chaos roots trailed behind him, remaining in the air where he’d come, the drain growing as he produced more.

  He didn’t throw his body into the attack, instead using claws to try and gut the man. Despite how irritated he was that Bai was fully willing to kill hundreds of innocents carelessly, he had to admit the man was incredibly skilled with the blade when he managed to keep up with Dei’s attacks despite being outpaced.

  Ultimately, Dei could end the fight if he wanted to, but was continuing to study the laws here, as they were different from anything he’d encountered before; Bai was strong, but he wasn’t a Slaughterer.

  ‘Why AM I trying to outpace him in speed?’

  Bringing his fists together overhead, Dei slammed them down into Bai’s sword, and the man was sent crashing into the mountaintop. The dustcloud blew away in a gentle breeze, revealing Bai down on one knee in the center of a perfectly circular crater, holding himself up by his silver sword and glaring at Dei.

  ‘How picturesque.’

  Dei floated down, the chaos roots trailing behind him. “Youve fought well, but I will be leaving now…” ‘Just as soon as I can find the seam in your world. How did you all even pull me through the dimensional barrier? I’ll have to check the space around the ritual site.’

  Ultimately, they’d been caught up in a trap meant for evil beings, and Bai was just defending his home, so Dei couldn’t blame him too harshly for attacking.

  Perumah “Thought loudly” through the karmic bond they shared, not willing to reveal herself with a spell but still directing information at Dei.

  “Kill that man because he is a cannibal, take his faith, and teleport us out now- the seam is near the ritual site, this world’s fabric is built strangely. I think ten Gods are descending from the bigger mountaintop.”

  Dei snapped to Bai. “You eat people!?”

  Bai scoffed, “A pill furnace is hardly-”

  Based on the “Translation” he received for the term “Pill furnace” alone, Dei pierced Bai with Connection, putting his full will into stealing the man’s “Dao.”

  He let out a short scream before drying like a husk.

  ‘Serves you right… who the hell keeps a soul trapped in a flesh construct of their own corpse just to create medicine!?’

  Dei reached out to his bond with Perumah, sensing that she had Thadria and Jacob attached to her as well, and darted back to the ritual site, feeling what Perumah was talking about.

  There were… lines along the world, imbued with all sorts of meaning and serving as this worlds version of an anchor or seam, though these appeared to be much larger than just a single point Dei was used to.

  He delved through right as several domains crashed into him, and Dei was glad for the heads up Perumah gave him, because all ten felt like they’d long-surpassed the level five hundred threshold.

  Dragging Perumah and the gang behind him, they fled into the raw fabric, back towards the world they’d originally come from before this entire fiasco.

  * * *

  When they were a respectable distance away, Jacob said “Well that was weird.”

  “And almost catastrophic,” Dei threw in. “For some reason, I get the sense that Bai fellow didn’t care about the entire city at the base of the mountain. Pretty sure thousands were going to die in that first attack if I hadn’t stopped it.”

  Perumah hummed in assent, “The empathetic emotions of every mind I touched appeared to be tampered down. Not by design, but adaptation, implying empathy is a bad trait to have in that universe.”

  “Well that’s kinda sad, but not new either. By the way, what did you do to that guys knife he threw at us? It scared him pretty bad.”

  “One of the ancient spells Okrin taught me. It erases anything it touches, but apparently my body is not adjusted to the new way of casting, as it was intensely exhaustive. I believe he was scared as the piece of paper was imbued with the Sword affinity of a much more powerful source than he, implying we were over his level of strength.”

  “Ahh okay, what about their reactions to our mana? They were… not happy about that.”

  “Every person in that universe held a weak connection to different affinities, placed as semi-physical structures in their bodies. These structures took the place of mana, as they were the method of transportation of affinity messages. When we used our mana, it translated over as that organ in our body. From their perspective, we were metaphorically throwing our lungs at them as a form of attack.”

  Dei burst out laughing at the imagery, then had a realization; “You know, it’s kinda strange but I guess we are the incomprehensible monsters from beyond the stars that attack in absurd and disgusting ways. Fun to think about, and not the first time I’ve been described as ‘Eldritch’ I suppose.”

  Still, Dei sighed inwardly at the long journey back. He did not want to be caught and pulled into another trap from Faith’s domain, so they’d have to do the short jumps.

  At least until he lost patience and decided they were far enough away from Faith.