Inside Solara, inside one of the upper-floor rooms of the Celestris Golden Inn, everything remained almost exactly as it had been before, the furniture hadn't been moved and nothing inside the room had changed, but the person sitting at the centre of the bed was completely different.
Atlas remained in a Lotus position with his eyes closed, his body perfectly still as he focused on himself, yet the Aura surrounding him was something even he found difficult to believe, it was far more intense than before and carried a pressure that made his current state feel completely different from the Atlas who had entered the Divine rank Ruin five days ago.
Five days ago, after coming out of the Divine rank Ruin with both Himalton and Alberion carried over his shoulders, Atlas had taken them directly to the Guild Infirmary before answering a few simple questions regarding the Mission and the deaths of the others who had entered the Ruin with them.
The Guild didn't question him any further because the Mission itself was extremely dangerous and deaths inside a Divine rank Ruin weren't something unexpected, as long as the people who returned provided the necessary information about the situation inside, there was no reason for the Guild to investigate every death individually.
And the Relic he got from that Ruin? Well it wasn't his as the Ruin itself was reserved by the Asfalon team so he only carried it and kept it beside Himalton who was unconscious inside the Infirmary, and from the looks and the Spirit energy of the Relic he saw inside the Ruin, it was clearly a High grade but not at the level of Cataclysm Grade, so he didn't care much about it and it's function. Which eventually made him think that giving it to Himalton was the best thing.
After giving his report, Atlas went straight back to the Inn, and although he had another meeting scheduled with Seraphiel the following day, he told Kaelion, who had come to check on him, that he wouldn't be able to attend and delayed the meeting for a few days. Kaelion and Seraphiel had already heard about what happened during the Divine rank Ruin, so Seraphiel didn't bother asking Atlas to come anyway, instead she simply thought 'I am relieved nothing happened to him, Hah...he is so reckless.'
From that point onward, Atlas didn't step outside his room at all, choosing to remain there while occasionally watching everything happening outside through the window.
The next day, however, something happened that completely changed the way Atlas looked at the world, because while watching from the window he suddenly saw an enormous army of Monsters marching toward Solara, and every single one of those Monsters carried Null. That alone was enough to make him pay attention, because Atlas knew exactly how dangerous Null was and seeing such a massive number of Monsters carrying it was already something that shouldn't be ignored, but what happened after they reached the city was something he had never expected to witness.
The enormous army of Monsters simply vanished.
The moment they reached the massive Walls surrounding Solara, Atlas first sensed an unimaginable amount of Spirit Energy being released throughout the city, and before he could properly understand what was happening, every single Monster disappeared without leaving anything behind. There was no prolonged battle, no visible exchange of attacks for him to understand what had happened, they simply... disappeared from the area almost instantly.
At first Atlas thought it was the work of the Queen, but the more he thought about it, the more his conclusion started falling apart. He knew roughly how much Spirit Energy an SSS-rank Individual possessed, and even if the Queen was far stronger than SSS-rank, the amount of Spirit Energy he had sensed that day was still too enormous for him to casually attribute everything to a single Individual.
What made it even stranger was the fact that he had seen different types of light beams spreading across the entire city instead of witnessing one concentrated attack from a single source.
That was when Atlas realized something he had completely failed to consider until now, 'That could only mean it's either many Individuals acting at once or some kind of mechanism, the latter is the most likely conclusion because a person's Spirit Energy comes out in a completely different way from what I sensed that day...'
Atlas remained sitting on the bed with his eyes closed as his mind returned to that incident again, because the more he thought about it, the more obvious his lack of information became. He had spent most of his time thinking about cultivation, abilities and his own revenge, but he had barely scratched the surface of this world's actual power structure, and that incident had shown him just how dangerous that ignorance could become.
'I need more information about that kind of mechanism, no, not just that, I need information about this world as well, the cultivation ranks and many other things I am ignorant about...and the only way to get them is Seraphiel Rosaria, she is a Noble so she definitely knows almost everything.'
That was the only reliable connection Atlas currently had who could provide him with the information he needed, because only a few months ago he had been nothing more than a normal commoner who didn't even have access to proper food, let alone information regarding the upper levels of society and cultivation. His original purpose behind gathering information had been mainly related to revenge, but things had changed now, because if he wanted to survive and make sure nobody could catch him off guard again, he couldn't remain ignorant about the world around him.
Once Atlas settled that matter in his mind, his thoughts shifted toward something else that had been bothering him ever since the battle inside the Ruin, 'That SSS-rank Monster didn't die because of only Null and Active Vector, the most important support in killing it was Shadow Reaper...how did I miss that detail? Is it because it's a passive ability?'
Atlas remembered that SSS-rank Monster again, and even now he couldn't forget how powerful it had been, to the point where he had serious doubts that even Rei-Kokuin would have been enough to damage it properly if he had relied on it alone. The thought made him realize that he had been overlooking one of the most important abilities he possessed, and the more he recalled the battle, the more obvious the contribution of Shadow Reaper became.
But after thinking it through, Atlas remembered the Shadow Explorer title he had gained, the title that had granted him three derived Abilities, all of which were passive in nature, and among them was Shadow Reaper, the Ability whose description in the Codex was rather simple.
The first attack on the enemy will deal fifty times more damage.
'That explains it...'
At the level he was currently at, Rei-Kokuin alone shouldn't have been enough to erase that SSS-rank Monster, even though Rei-Kokuin itself could erase everything in its path, there was still a limit to its power, and that limit was Atlas himself. No matter how destructive the technique was, its actual output was still determined by his own Cultivation, which meant that against something as powerful as that Monster, the difference was simply too large for Rei-Kokuin to completely bridge on its own.
'Well, good thing I had it...if not for that, I would have been killed by that damned Monster.'
His thoughts eventually drifted toward the main matter he had been holding off for all these days, not because he wanted to delay it and not because his instincts were warning him against it, but simply because he hadn't been capable of doing anything until now.
The transformation he had gone through inside the Ruin and the pain that came with it had left his entire body in a state where even moving had been difficult, forcing him to remain inside his room until his body finally adjusted.
As for what had caused that pain and transformation, the answer was something Atlas had already understood.
It was his attributes.
He had finally pushed them all the way to 100. After fighting the Boss and waking up, Atlas had noticed something that immediately caught his attention, the instinct that had always screamed at him and pushed him away from reaching that exact 100th mark had completely disappeared. The resistance that had been present before was no longer there, which could only mean one thing.
He had finally adjusted to the strength contained within his own body.
Although there were several other things that had shocked Atlas when he opened the Codex inside the Ruin, he hadn't had the time or the condition to properly examine them after actually reaching that 100th mark, but now that five days had passed and his body had finally stabilized, there was nothing stopping him from looking at them again.
Atlas slowly opened his eyes.
His focus shifted toward the empty space in front of him as he called out the familiar command.
"Originate."
Just like always, the Bloodbound Codex appeared in front of him, the ancient pages emerging into existence as they had countless times before, but the moment the first page unfolded, Atlas's eyes immediately narrowed.
The very first page had changed.
And this time, the changes were far greater than anything he had seen before.
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