Chapter 1449 Passing Out Rowan had a few moments before Elura drove a blade through his skull to make changes to his physique, or else he would not be able to hide the explosion of power that would erupt out of his body. If he failed, he was not confident in his inactivated Origin bloodlines and Class to be able to fight against two powerful Old Ones like Seed and Elura whilst still being inside their center of power, a freaking Primordial Domain, which, as he had now learned was the bodies of the Primordials themselves. Seed had not hidden his intentions about causing him great pain and when Rowan felt the power of Caine's blood in the hands of Elura, he knew what was coming next, he had seen this power in operation twice, and the first time he observed it was when the God King Golgoth was transforming pieces of his consciousness to flesh, and the second was when Caine had used this power to transform the ethereal body of Shamaran, giving her flesh and blood so that he could consume her, however, what he had sensed both of those times was nothing before the pure power that was erupting from the drop of blood in Elura's hand. He did not have the advantage of enhanced time to figure out a plan because the perception of Seed and Elura may even surpass his own, and he had few moments to act before everything came crashing down. These past few moments had been a clusterfuck, Seed had blindsided him, but there had been enough time since then for him to begin to strategize. Rowan had been running various simulations in his head on the many methods that could be used by Seed to coerce him into the path of his choosing, and amongst them, the worst had been the corruption of his flesh, and not because Rowan was afraid that such a thing would happen, rather it was the opposite. His flesh could not be corrupted by any sort of energy when he was literally made out of the pure essence of creation and destruction, and the only reason these green runes were holding him bound was that he was allowing it, he had not yet deciphered the dense language that was used in its creation but he was slowly prying open its secrets. He did not fear that this power might touch his Origin Land or his bloodlines because they existed as part of his flesh but also separated, and it would require him to allow entrance into his Origin Land for anything or anyone to access it. He was here with his original dimensional flesh, and if Elura was going to be using the power of Caine against him, it meant they wanted to weaken his corporeal body, in essence making him mortal, thereby breaking the defenses he had over his soul. Rowan understood that the process immortals deal with grief or any other situation in their lives was different from a mortal, and this was not just because an immortal could live forever and attachment was something that would slowly become harder to form to those around them when everything even stone would fade away in their endless lives, it was also because the souls and bodies of immortals were different and intense emotions were muted, making it possible for them to kill billions of sentient species and hardly feel any remorse. Rowan had once explored that difference while he was still a mortal as he experimented on both the souls of gods and men. A mortal, on the other hand, may end up a broken mess if they killed a single person, their minds and souls tortured with the weight of ending the lives of others. By his direct actions and orders, Rowan, in his short immortal life, had killed countless trillions, and if he added all the souls he had been collecting from various sources all over the years, all of that made up a frightening weight that no mortal or immortal minds could bear. Caine's power was to forcefully refine anything into mortal flesh, his dominion over the flesh was something that few could compete against, and logically Rowan who was at the fifth-dimensional level had no right to fight against the influence of an Old One like Caine, but his unique physique would betray how different he had become for everyone else. There was only one thing he could do to prevent his cover from being blown, and without hesitation, Rowan followed up with the plan. His Class had given him a new power Eos, with it Rowan had been able to suppress his physique that had reached the peak of the Supreme Core realms, and if he had pushed for higher, existence itself would begin to crumble around him, Rowan was sure there were other Old Ones that had higher physical stats than him, but they had a more dense form of energy and Will that they used to suppress that power if they wanted to walk around in reality, else they would usually remain inside their dimensions because moving around would simply cost too much energy to keep reality safe. Rowan was sure that one of the greatest reasons Primordials chose to sleep was that their existence was now so crushingly powerful that any of them that entered this Era without fully muting their powers would simply end all of existence. Eos had been able to squeeze all of the physical capabilities of Rowan into a compact ball, leaving his flesh devoid of all that power, ready to be refilled once more to the peak of reality, and if he needed to summon his strength once more, he only needed to unleash the Eos which contained all his might. Rowan had been planning to upgrade his physique to the peak once more and then use a second Eos to swallow it, and because he could easily gain attributes he planned to continue upgrading his stats and then storing them inside Eos until he reached the limits for the number of Eos he could store inside of him, and at that time, he wondered what his physical might would be if he decided to unleash all of his Eos, would it be able to crush all of existence if he moved a single finger? If there was anything that would be able to preserve his secrets, it would have to be Eos; the Will of Truth was straining to keep reality around him mellowed, and it could not handle deceiving a power that Caine's. Activating the power of his Class without the new form of energy that his Origin Land should have given him was difficult, but a part of his consciousness had been working on this problem and now he could activate a bit of his power rather quickly if necessity dictated. Breaking open his second Eos, he felt tendrils of its power reach across his entire physique, trying to find attributes to store, and after it removed Rowan's base stats, which was a hundred thousand points for each of his attributes, it began to dig deeper, because Rowan willed it to consumed more, not just his attributes, but the foundations of his body. Eos hesitated for a moment, and like a greedy shark smelling blood, it pounced on Rowan's dimensional flesh and began to consume and it was at this moment that Elura drove the blade into Rowan's body. Whatever pain that this blade was set to unleash, and it was truly painful, it was nothing before the pain that arose from Eos devouring his dimensional flesh, and Rowan screamed, because the power of Caine had latched unto his weakened flesh and it was enhancing the pain of being devoured by Eos. His green hair turned red like blood, and so did his eyes. Rowan's body was frozen in position, but micro tremors pulsated all over his body, and his screams were so guttural that he broke his jaws against the bindings of Seed as his body strained for any outlet to release his pain. For a moment Rowan was brought to a threshold of pain that he had never reached in his entire life, and when he thought it could not get worse, it did. The grief and all the negative emotions he had been holding inside all of these while, not only for the death of Maeve but so many others, crashed upon him like a relentless wave, and his mind fractured. Blackness encroached over his vision, and the last thought in his head was one of surprise, 'Am I passing out?… No, my Will, I need to maintain…'