Chương 14: Essence Of The World

Everything that exists in the world is made up of the Essence.

Water, Land, Animals, Minerals, Fire, Monsters, People.

However, the concentration and the proportion of the Essence in anything and everything differ. For example, Animals have more 'Life' Essence concentration than Land, and Fire has more 'Energy' Essence concentration than Animals.

Since everything and everyone was made up of Essence, it meant that they were bound by them, and by extension, the Authorities that governed the respective Essences.

But, with the body Elish possessed, he was not bound by any of them. He was made up of none of the Essences, thereby making him immune to their effects, limitations, and Authorities.

That alone had various advantages for him, but also disadvantages.

For one, it affected how he used Hex.

Usually, a Hex user needed to transform the Essence which were within them to achieve their desirable results, but for him he had no Essence to begin with.

By sacrificing some measure of his body's integrity and interfering with the Essences around him, he could also use Hex.

It wasn't his prefered means, since he was still limited in substance, but with Hex being extremely useful, he found himself having no choice but to use it when certain circumstances arose.

"Haa…" Elish glanced at Astra, who was still fast asleep.

If everything went smoothly, he would be able to return to this exact place before long.

The location of the item he sought was in a ruin, thousands of miles from his location. Normally it would take him a great deal of time journeying to get there, and by then Astra's wings would have been long gone.

However, that wouldn't be necessary.

"[Hex #72: Warp]."

Immediately he uttered those words, space seemed to wrap around Elish, collapsing and rearranging at his command, until it swallowed him entirely.

In a flash, he had vanished completely from the room.

********

[Hex #72: Warp]

Using this Hex to distort Space and Time, the user would be able to close the distance between himself and his target.

Of course, no Hex was omnipotent. There were conditions to be fulfilled before certain effects could be actualized.

For this particular Hex the user needed to fulfill two conditions:

One was the exact knowledge of the target being warped to. That is, the appearance and sufficient traits unique to only that particular target and none other.

The second was the location of the target. Since Hex was like a machine, or more accurately a 'Code', whatever was imputed in it was carried out.

Like hacking into the system of the world, such was its nature.

Since Elish had fulfilled both conditions, he was able to successfully warp to his destination: the place that held his artifact.

~BZZZTTTTZZZZ~

A sudden buzz caused a last-minute interference with his teleportation, causing him to stop short of his determined destination.

"So this is as far as I go, huh?" Elish smiled, looking around him under the canopy of the night.

As he suspected, he had warped to the entrance of the ruin and not the exact room where his item was located.

The entire region was surrounded by rocky mountains, and the entrance to this particular ruin seemed like nothing more than a gaping cave.

'It looks like the barrier I had placed around the ruin is still active.'

It was an extremely powerful barrier, and it could only be removed by another Monarch, so he understood why his WARP was unable to completely achieve its purpose.

'It's a relief this place is still intact. I suppose the Monarchs either didn't know about this place. Or maybe they didn't really care for the item…'

With his current ability, he did not have enough power to break the barrier that surrounded the ruin, or even scratch it for that matter, but...

"There's always a loophole," Elish smiled to himself regardless of the odds.

He walked toward the entrance and entered the ruin normally, despite how impossible it should have been.

The barrier would have sent his entire body disintegrating into nothingness, since anything that touched the barrier would be reduced to nothing.

But his case was different.

The way the barrier worked was that it automatically destroyed any and all Essence that came in contact with it, and since all things and beings comprised of Essences, they were eliminated.

However, since his entire being was independent of any Essence, the barrier could not recognize him.

That made it a cakewalk for him to get in.

He couldn't use Hex to get in immediately because Hex made use of Essences, like a hack. So it was technically an Essence-filled mechanism.

That meant that he had to manually enter the ruins.

'Well, this isn't all that bad. I might as well stretch his legs.'

******

Elish walked for several minutes, noticing that nothing had changed since he created the ruin.

'No surprise there.' Since the barrier blocked out all Essence, concepts such as time and change did not apply within the ruin.

Meaning no matter how much time was spent in the ruin, no time at all passed in the world.

Elish eventually arrived at a checkpoint, and before him was a large gate. The gate shone so brightly and it was so massive that he would have to raise his head almost to the ceiling to see the top of it.

"The entrance of the Store room… or so it appears to be," he muttered with a smirk.

Of course this grand gate only served as a distraction to throw off any invader who managed to infiltrate the barrier.

For the gate to still remain standing and the barrier to be intact, it meant no one had gotten in thus far. Still, he had been a very cautious and meticulous being at the time he made everything.

Or maybe it was because he had a lot of time on his hands.

He made so many traps in so many of his dungeons and ruins that were most likely never going to activate. The Giant Shiny Gate, for instance. It was supposed to swallow whoever opened it and consume them in an eternal void.

"Such a waste," he mumbled.

He turned from the gate and saw a very slight opening in a corner. Most people would be too distracted by the gate, that they would fail to notice the opening in the corner. He smiled and approached the opening.

As he got closer, the opening grew wider until it was wide enough for him to walk through comfortably, and so he did.

"All things seem to be working well."