Chapter 1042: Evolution Rowan was a few hundred feet to the ground before he stabilized his descent, but the energy of Ascendancy flowing in his body and outside of it had weakened, if before it was flowing through large pipes, now it was as if the passage of energy had been reduced to passing through a straw. If with all his energy stores he was feeling this way, then it meant that any normal Explorers must be having a hundred times worse experience, making any lives with Aura would become a draining and problematic challenge. How were they expected to fight with such a crutch? Underground he could feel the Shiik becoming agitated as energy flooded its being and its size began to expand, cracking the earth around it. The Aura of Calamity that filled the earth had become ridiculous, Rowan knew in the past before he was killed, whether it was five hundred thousand years ago or a million years ago, he could not really tell, the Aura of Calamity had not have been this powerful, but something must have changed during this time period for this new state of existence was not normal in the least. If the three suns belonged to Ascendant Aura then the other seven suns were surely of Calamity, there was no longer balance between the two forces, and what Rowan wanted to discover was if such changes were a new development or if such events had happened before in the past. If the two forces waxed and waned over the endless time they had been in existence, then this was something that could be controlled by the World's Will to an extent, but if the balance had never been broken, then this signified that the changes in the world must be monumental, and somehow Rowan found himself leaning towards this second option. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶 A part of himself was missing, and although he did not remember much, he still felt that his descent was not the worst thing that could have happened to this world, 'Because I did not come alone. I brought something here with me... I brought Time.' What that meant or what it truly signified was not something Rowan felt he was able to handle at this time, thus it was imperative that he quickly grew stronger and assembled his consciousness because he was running out of time. The already chaotic world of Doom Star was at the edge because of his presence and if he was not stable enough to withstand what was to come, his convictions would not matter because he would be swept away like sands before a tornado. The changes in the world were jarring, but Rowan's battle senses were tingling, he ignored the majority of his speculations and focused on what was in front of him. The future could wait, he needed to build his foundations in the present. Looking up in the sky and then again at the earth where the flood of Calamity was emerging from the mist as if it was a passageway to another dimension, Rowan wryly chuckled, "So it has reached such a point? This is why the Ascendants are losing. How can you fight off an enemy that is born from your strengths?" Rowan was not aware, but the birth of the Shiik was a recent thing and was linked to these changes overtaking the world, for as the tides of power began to shift from the light to the darkness, new and more horrifying Calamities were being born on nearly a daily basis as even light itself was giving birth to darkness. Even the mortals had noticed, these days, that it was not a strange thing for an open fire to cast shadows instead of light. The Calamity that erupted from the mist was tiny, the size of cockroaches but even that foul insect looked better than the abominations that were rushing out of the mist, they numbered in the millions, and more were still emerging with every single second, and in a short while the beach was filled with seemingly innumerable tides of bodies. These Calamities were like ravenous locusts and they moved towards the crashed ship, tiny metallic teeth clanking together as they consumed each other on their route to their targets. Before crossing halfway there were millions of newer Calamities being born, evolved from consuming their fellows, becoming bigger, stronger, and... stranger, as these Calamities' evolutionary pathways began to diverge, some grew wings, other scales, fur, shells, and a thousand other variations, some even taking the form of the elements itself, but they never stopped consuming each other, even when they had a clear target to feed their foul hunger. Their power levels exploded as well as their size, and although this delayed their progress toward the ships, it only escalated the dangers the Explorers were going to face, as the increased size and weight of these monsters had begun to shake the earth. The mist however was beginning to fade, as whatever energy of Ascendancy was left imprinted on reality had run its course, but the damages had already been done, and Calamities covered the ground as far as the eyes could see. In disabling the ships, Rowan had also taken down all their primary weapons, and as he had expected, the Explorers within began to rush out to handle this flood of Calamities bearing down on their ship, they could not fight using the weapons or gain a height advantage, they could only survive using their personal strength. Even that should be a bleak prospect. It did not take much to determine that unless they found a way to prevent the birth of more calamities anytime they used their Ascendant powers then they were doomed. With the seven Calamity suns overhead, it was expected that anytime they used their Ascendancy powers, Calamity would be born from their traces that would be left behind in reality. There was little time before the battle was joined but the Explorers emerged from their ships in an orderly manner, the weakest of them were at the Heroic Rank, and before long Rowan was seeing dozens of Glorious Ranked Explorers among their positions, and in a short while there were three thousand Explorers outside the ships, and he finally counted ten Legend Rank Explorers, fifty-three Glorious Ranked Explorers, and thousands of Heroic ranked Explorers. Standing in the air were two Deific Ranked Explorers who were watching the tides of Calamity nearing their position in a calm manner. Intrigued about what was about to happen, Rowan sat in the air and watched, he needed the energy of Ascendancy inside the bodies of these Explorers, so there was no way he would be allowing the Calamities to devour these Explorers, but before then the confidence that these Explorers were displaying was still palpable, and he wanted to see the methods they intended to use in sorting out this problem. He had scanned through the ships multiple times and unless there was an Ascendant who was skilled in the art of stealth, then there was no one left in the ships. A silent order was passed through the ranks of Explorers and from their storage treasures, they began to pull out weapons. Rowan smiled to himself self-deprecatingly, he had forgotten for a moment the importance of tools to a mortal. But he knew it would not be enough, the tides of Calamities were no longer endless, but among them, Glorious Ranking Calamities had grown to the tens of thousands and it would not be long before the first Legend appeared.