Chapter 1842: The End (2) Telmus left Staff behind inside the Origin Land. She was the most precious thing to him, and leaving her behind showed how much he had come to trust this enigmatic creator. Leaving behind a trail of nothing as his body ripped through layers of Reality, Telmus found himself in a strange place, where the laws he knew about existence had vanished, and ideas became the building block of this space. This place was shaped like a gigantic castle, bigger than a billion dimensions merged together, and if Telmus were not focused on hunting down the trail of vanishing energy, he would have been stuck in place, awestruck. Even though he knew that becoming Primordial would lead him to places he could never have imagined, the impact of seeing this scene, among others he had seen since he entered the Origin Land, would stay with him for as long as he lived. “Am I inside the Origin of Soul?” he muttered in fascination; however, with his focus on following the traces of the disappearing energy, this thought briefly touched his mind before it was discarded. It was important to note that from the moment Telmus detected something was wrong, saw the state of the Origin Land, and pursued the path of the vanishing energy, less than a fraction of a nanosecond had passed. Staff a powerful immortal was not even aware that she had been taken out from the realm of her father and brought into the Origin Land. In the realm of time that a Primordial operated, most would consider it to be instantaneous, as they could not move or exert enough consciousness power in such a short time frame. Although to Telmus, time was clearly passing him by, to others, no time had passed. Ahead of him, the energy flowing towards the depths of the Origin of Soul had vanished, while he was still a bit behind. It was not because he was slow; the energy was traveling unimpeded through this Origin, while Telmus had to pierce his way through with his spear. Wave after wave of pure soul essence thundered past his body as his appearance resembled a heavenly spear piercing through a realm that most mortal and immortal minds could not comprehend. The disquiet in his heart was continuously increasing, and Telmus urged his body to move faster. He had rarely felt the emotion called fear, but now there was a sickening feeling rising in the depths of his guts that he could not deny was undoubtedly fear. “Rowan, don’t die before I find you… Don’t do anything stupid. Wait for me!” Telmus roared, willing himself to move faster. He was still a young Primordial; if he were a bird, then he had not even left his egg. To fully understand his powers, he would need billions of years at the least, and a few Minor Eras at the most for him to become a fully realized Primordial, and this was just the beginning; the process of fully understanding who he was would be an affair that would stretch for many Cosmic Eras. But these were in the best of times, not now, when all of existence was under the grip of evil. Telmus could not afford to be slow, even when the only option there is, was to be slow. He had pierced through the second layer of the Soul when he realized that he could use the arrangement of the Soul’s Origin as a framework to decipher his own. His consciousness, which had probably grown millions of times stronger than it was when he was an Old One, quickly analyzed the feasibility of this plan. ‘Would it work? Perhaps… what are the chances of success? Twenty percent. Then that is enough.’ Even though he had simply passed through the first layer of the soul, Telmus’s consciousness was in many ways more complete than that of Rowan, and he was able to instantly copy the structure of the Soul’s Origin. He was able to easily do this because Rowan had not obstructed his view. With the structure of the first layer of the soul–the Sanctum of Eternity, firmly in his mind, Telmus combusted his consciousness, and a scream of pain erupted from his lips. Telmus had no idea he could do this. The idea of burning himself as fuel was so practically alien to him that he knew this technique must be the result of his merger with the Origin Land. A pained laughter erupted from him when he understood the depths that Rowan was willing to go to achieve his dreams… a depth so visceral and cruel it became engraved in the nature of his body. What sort of man would set himself ablaze to light up a small corner of Reality inside an endless sea of darkness? A hero, a savior, or perhaps a monster. “Then let’s be monsters!” Telmus roared and burned his flesh alongside his consciousness, transforming into a blazing comet of light so potent that the entire castle lit up, and his shape, which was like a burning spear falling from the heavens when viewed from afar, became shaped like a cross made of light. A billion trillion inspiration flowed through his mind every fraction of a moment, where every moment was a tiny fraction of a nanosecond. The Origin of the Soul and his own could not be the same, but there were traces he could follow, subtle inspiration that could guide him, and his mind gripped them all. “What is my Origin as the Path of Defiant Ascension? It cannot be a path of introspection, I am not Soul… No, it has to be a path of conquest, where divinity is seized and not granted. It is brutal, the oath of a warrior!” Everything fell into place, and Telmus roared in pain and exultation as the first layer of his Origin took shape. In the depths of who he was as a Primordial, all of the Origin Power he had gathered in his short life became rapidly compressed into a core. He should have taken a much longer time to gather energy for his core, but the Origin Force of Demon had been transformed into his foundation, giving him all the tools he needed for this moment. Telmus spoke his Origin into life, “First layer of Defiant Ascension… The Pantheon of Chains!” The core of him exploded as a colossal, circular coliseum resembling the Arena where his destiny was born appeared in the center of his being, floating in a void that resembled a bleeding nebula. The sand on its floor is made of ground-up commandments and shattered prayers. The seats are thrones occupied by the Echoes of the first seven bloodlines of Trion. They are the audience and the jury. For any immortal aspirant to delve into the Origin of Defiant Ascension, they must face the seven manifestations of his cosmic law. They were the Pantheon of Chains Even if he was the first to open his gate to the Pantheon of Chains, he must face their rule; otherwise, he would not be worthy of this Origin, and he would be shattered. If he made a mistake and failed his own test, Telmus would instantly perish. The contradiction that would arise from a Law not recognizing itself would tear Telmus apart. There was a twenty percent chance of success and an eighty percent chance of failure… this part of it was the side of failure. A strand of Telmus’s burning consciousness slammed down into the Arena to face his Origin.