Chapter 1074: Unexpected Changes In this area where time and space were measurable and malleable, premonition was a visible phenomenon, and reality darkened as the sky burned red, a trillion lost souls screamed to the heavens as they wept tears of blood that came down like a flood, drowning the world in red. The darkness groaned and a voice that echoed from the depths of time spoke, "My Queen Cometh..." All these phenomena instantly vanished a moment later as if it was nothing but a figment of a dream, but everyone here heard, saw, and felt the crushing dread that had held the world bound. The Ascendant in white opened his mouth to scream, but the world seemed to have been lost in time as everything froze, and a wave of red erupted from Rowan's body, as well as thirty mighty limbs that reached up for miles as if they were about to tear the heavens apart. Rowan had been fighting by himself, but he was not alone, merged into his body was the Shiik, and it was his hidden ace, because, unlike an Ascendant that needed to merge a continent with their Natal Treasure, a Calamity only needed Aura and experience to level up from the Deific Rank. That experience came in the form of performing feats of terrible acclaim, like say, killing an Ascendant, and Rowan had not just killed any normal Ascendant, the Divine Ascendant who was at the First Dan, and with the Shiik merged into the hand that ripped the Ascendant into pieces, it gained all the tangible benefit of killing such a power being. At this moment the Shiik had fulfilled all the necessary rites to become a Newborn Calamity God, and Rowan knew that even though the Shiik would become extremely powerful, he was not utilizing it for their strength in battle, against the opposition here, a thousand similar Shiik would be useless, the higher dimension was one where number could not cross, no he was using it as a channel to summon Calamity, the true Calamity. He could hide the ascent of the Shiik to a Calamity God from the Ascendants around him because he was converting soul energy directly into Calamity Aura with no outside interference, and his potent Ascendant Aura infusing his body was enough of a shield to block any minute Calamity wave that might escape during the Ascension, in the end, reality had betrayed him but it was still too late, Rowan had already begun his preparation even before he fought the Divine Ascendant in the continents below. When the red light surged out from his hands it was already too late. Rowan could not control higher dimensional forces, but with the right steps, he could manipulate them. It was unknown who first detected something had changed because what happened next took place in a realm beyond the understanding of everyone present there. Rowan had pulled the trigger, but even he was not fully conversant of the effect that would follow. A poet would say that the Heavens Changed and Hell took its place. Rowan had seen the Calamity Suns take the place of the Ascendant Suns when he was at the lower Continents, and that time the effect had been jarring in its suddenness and unexpectedness, one moment there was light, and suddenly there was darkness. He should have paid more attention to this. Being this close to the changing of reality as Ascendancy fled before Calamity, the Aura in Rowan's body was so suppressed completely that he could barely stand on his own two feet, only his golden robe kept him standing. The space created by the White Ascendant holding him bound was broken with a loud shriek as the Threshold which had not shifted a single inch despite the previous battle groaned and began to shatter under a strain beyond the comprehension of immortals. The Ascendants were thrown into disarray, and except for Rowan and the Ascendants who were at the First Dan and above, the rest collapsed to the ground as gravity and other fundamental rules of reality were thrown into chaos. Overhead, something fantastic was happening, whereas from the lower continents, the change from Ascendancy to Calamity was fast, in the upper continents it was a mind-breaking battle. It was nearly impossible to describe what happened next, as darkness began bleeding into the light, the Ascendant Suns overhead shuddered intensely before they started to shatter into pieces, flinging out large geysers of flames and light that were rapidly swallowed by red flames and darkness. Millions of Ascendant Continents above shattered to pieces, in an orgy of violence that could be least described with the word, Calamity. The shattering of the continents was just the first step for they transformed into black flesh and eldritch blood, and the three ascendant suns exploded as seven Calamity Suns were birthed from their ruin. It was like watching a child tear its way out of a mother's womb from her back. It was a sickening display of perversity. "What have you done!" The White Ascendant screamed, no longer bound by time, and Rowan simply shrugged, at first he was surprised that the cry from the Ascendant carried a large amount of pain, but his eyes widened when all the Ascendants here began to transform. Massive tentacles burst out from their bodies, snapping against space and drawing harsh shrieks of pain from reality. Tens of thousands of hungry eyes erupted from the darkness as madness took their place. Rowan almost laughed when he realized that the abrupt transition in the sky was easily explained when it meant there was no difference between Calamity and Ascendancy, at least to the powers controlling everything from the shadows. At the right juncture, they could switch places. This entire war was a farce, and as always, it was the mortals that suffered for it. An intense wave of danger assaulted Rowan, and he took a step back as his body rippled, replaced by the Shiik. Rowan's vision was reduced to a dot as the emerging Newborn Calamity God took over, but the danger he felt did not reduce, instead, it heightened and with a sigh, he placed himself into a coma and he became the Shiik, and the Shiik became him. His mind slowed, and everything came to him as if he was dreaming, yet his awareness never faded. It was a backdoor he had created when merging with the Shiik. At the time when the mind of the creature was yet formless, Rowan did not tamper with it, so as not to draw attention from the World's Will, instead, he replaced all the neural framework of the Shiik with his Parasitic cells, creating a situation where the emerging mind of the Shiik belonged to the Calamity but the framework that held the mind in place belonged to Rowan. The same process he used to create the body of this Ascendant Explorer, he could also create a body inside the Shiik using the bloodline of Calamity. The feeling of danger passed, Rowan had become as much a Calamity as the Shiik itself, existing as the container that held its mind, and at this moment that mind was in turmoil as great changes swept over it. Its mind which contained nothing but instincts and a childlike but cruel notion of morality began to bloom into an infernal tapestry of madness. Thoughts formed at lightning speeds and to accommodate them, Rowan had to grow. The Shiik exploded in size and somehow its body remained the same.