Chapter 1212: Stealing Souls Above a Central Continent which was the highest stage a Continent could achieve in the lower realms, after they succeeded in defeating numerous Calamity Incursions, a boy made from white flame hovered, from his heart emerged tiny strands of golden tendrils a million times smaller than a spider's thread and numbered in the billions. From these threads could be heard the sounds of whispers as if from the mouth of an uncountable number of people, and from the way his eyes were moving in their sockets, he was not just hearing all these people, but also watching every single one of them. Beside him was a map made from white flames that was constantly being updated in real- time, and then he unexpectedly closed his eyes as a message came to his mind, "Return to me Lost." The Lost Flames nodded, even if there was no need to do so and he spoke into the winds, his voice dispersing into millions of streams, "For those of you who have not yet acquired a Central Continent but are close to them, you have three hours to complete that task, for the rest of you, we have to go back, perhaps there may be a chance to gather more of them in the future, but your safety is paramount.." R The past few months had been one of incredible enlightenment for Rowan, and at this moment inside his Ascendant body's mental space, the vortex had grown so massive it was almost touching the edges of his mental space. He had made several other connections to other places after he accessed certain vague memories while being careful that he was not drawn into them, but his main attention was not on this matter, whatever he was summoning by opening this box they were getting closer, and he only had to maintain the status quo for as long as possible, until it became too late to stop this process. This was the reason that despite the fact that he had a hostile aix dimensional Ascendant inside his domain he had made no move, the Temple Mother Eliaxha was an enigma, despite the fact that she knew she was in an enemy's lair, she still chose to sleep while waiting for them to show up. Rowan was amused knowing that this action of hers was not only due to the supreme confidence in her abilities, it was also in her nature to sleep as much as possible, but as amusing as that was to observe, the majority of Rowan's sight was fixed on two matters. The first was something that he had always disregarded, but now he was making an effort to change, and that was safeguarding the lives of mortals in the realm. The oncoming war would ravage the surface of this realm and the mortals would be exterminated, already there were countless of them suffering and dying at every moment and Rowan sent his golden giants to as many continents as possible to burrow into the grounds of each continent, and create a connection with him. Each golden giant would claim a Central Continent whose influence was enough to control a hundred Arising Continent and a thousand New Continents. In this manner, a single golden giant would be able to oversee more than a thousand continents, and because the golden giants numbered in the billions, with enough time, Rowan felt that he might be able to gather most of the mortals in this realm. This was a massive task, but Rowan was capable enough to do such a thing. He would be saving the mortals for lives of endless suffering, true, but he was not entirely noble. There would have been a time when the suffering of the mortals would have caused him great distress and he would have done anything to spare them of this fate, but now he still felt their suffering, perhaps more keenly than before with his dimensional soul that harnesses his ability as a creator, but he knew the stakes and he would not break them to make lives for the mortals easier. Rowan had been learning new things about the soul and this realm, and all the evidence he had gathered had shown him a direction that he had overlooked by were perfect tools for him to use in his war. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞 When he had climbed over the threshold and seen the heavens after killing the Divine Ascendant, he had made the Shiika Queen of Calamity and then he had seen the true vision of this world, at least a small part of it. In that vision, he had seen a river of blood filled with skulls that held nothing but decay and pain. Rowan had been horrified when he saw that what he was witnessing were souls, souls that had been placed into an endless cycle of reincarnation and had been tortured for countless eternities. He had also seen the life cycles of the realm, where it created two separate powers and put them in a state of endless conflict. The battles between the Ascendant and Calamity were one in a long line of endless battles. This was important information, perhaps not relevant to most but for Rowan, its importance could not be underestimated. The Eye of Time had told him that Soul had been imprisoned by Chaos inside of Oblivion, essentially shackling her under the endless weight of space, making it only possible for new mortal souls to be produced in the third-dimensional universe. A third-dimensional universe controlled by Chaos because all of space was essentially his body. This meant that every great power in reality had to be connected to the Great Darkness for sustenance, and what did this mean to Doom Star, a realm that was locked out from accessing the Third Dimension? It meant that this realm had a limited amount of souls in its possession, and these souls had been taken to their breaking point and beyond. For countless eternities, these souls had died and reincarnated, unable to find peace, unable to grow, their pain had led to an endless river of darkness that was slowly drowning this world, it was no mistake that Calamity would always come out stronger in the end, the souls in this realm had become tainted. The war between Calamity and Ascendancy was meaningless to the World's Will, and although the immortals of the realm might think they were the darling of the world, and saw mortals as ants, the truth was that in the grand scheme of things, every mortal was more precious to the world than a thousand Ascendant. At the end of everything, it would be the mortals that would restart a new cycle for the realm. The Ascendants and Calamity were immortal, without the war they would exist forever and the realm would not be able to start a new cycle. It had a purpose for creating this endless cycle of strife, and mortals were the key. It was a good thing then that Rowan was a bastion for souls. The months he had spent here connecting to the vortex had led him to explore his soul deeply and also understand the endless stream of soul energy entering his body, and then he realized that he was wrong about their source. At first, Rowan had thought that the soul energy he was receiving was coming from the soul crystals he had gathered inside his dormant dimension, but it was now that he was beginning to realize that he had been consuming the souls of the dead of Doom Star all this while. He had been stealing from the realm without his knowledge and underneath the nose of the World's Will because he was shielded by this Ascendant body! [Note: An Eternity can be seen as a Minor Era or the lifespan of a universe, usually a billion trillion years.]