Chapter 996 Runic Arrangement Rowan accessed his situation quickly, muting any eruption of panic in his heart. The portion of his rocky body that had been swallowed was still intact, although he found it particularly difficult for his perception to scan through it. He appeared to be made from rock, but this was most likely not the case due to how dense he was and how he did not suffer a single scratch even after falling from orbit while also under the propulsion from the force Old Man Seed had used to launch him into this star. His defensive properties in this form were most likely extreme given the drawbacks, and whatever would be eating him would have to spend a while chewing through this tough nut that was his present form, Rowan did not envy his devourer this task. After analyzing the crisis, even though he was now aware of the truth, nothing about his situation had immediately changed. The only thing it did was give him the timeline on which his survival hinged. Without this knowledge, he would have perished without even understanding how he died. Rowan was not afraid of dying, but he wanted a chance to fight for his life when the time came for him to go. He did not want to die without the knowledge of who or what was able to perform this feat. The consumption of his body remained constant even after he had detected the mental intrusion, with the three most likely reasons being that the owner of the flesh could not detect that he had broken the perception lock over his memories or they knew and simply did not care, and the last reason being that he was a rather hefty meal to swallow, and they were hurrying up to devour him, but his constitution even in this form was not normal and they would have to struggle to finish the meal. No matter how much Doom Star had sought to warp his flesh, there was a limit to it, his powers were simply unfathomable. Inside his body was a confluence of impossible powers, with the latest addition of the Nine Supreme Circle taking him to a brand new level of potential. No matter how much Doom Star had suppressed him, all that potential could not simply be erased, and if Nemesis was also present in this world, it would be smiling for it had brought Rowan into quite a bind. 'So you have powers so ridiculously far above your level, then my dear rule-breaker. Here is an impossible situation that even you will not be able to survive.' "Fuck you Nemesis," Rowan muttered with his consciousness, the sound carrying through the crater and sounding like a thunderstorm. Not caring if this entity existed or even heard him, he had begun to see the hand of this creature in so many things, and it was just a matter of time before his hands were over its damned neck. So Rowan had no choice but to return to his previous venture and attempt to complete his understanding of the shattered Runes, it was the only path he could see that would lead to a change in his situation. The chaotic runes had been crashing against each other for a while now and they had been crushed into small pieces, but it appeared that the runes could not be further broken down, giving him a chance to build them back together. If he was unlucky and the runes kept being crushed, then he would have to give up and find another option, with the awareness that he had just lost the best chance of survival. Cursing his weak consciousness power Rowan began the rigorous task of picking apart an entire alien language without a single frame of reference that could give him a starting point. It should have been an impossible task, but he had something that could help him with it—the golden lightning. Repeating his memories countless times had given him the opportunity to understand this glaring golden clue in front of him, and he would be remiss not to use it. It was the only advantage he had in this massive disaster. The message of the golden lightning that came to him was not just presented in a written format, it was also auditory. Like all higher-level languages, it was able to express many things at the same time. It had flashed by quickly, but Rowan now had his Rosetta Stone that he could use in deciphering the language; what he needed however was to arrange the broken runes in a manner that would make sense. It was as if he had access to only a single alphabet, and the crushed fragment of the remaining alphabet, and using the form of that single alphabet as a basis, he was going to rebuild the remaining alphabet. As if this task was not impossible enough, the alphabet was utterly alien to him, and it was not just made from a comfortable twenty-six letters, a higher-order language could hold millions of 'letters.' this one appeared to be even more complex. This task was difficult but with the lightning runes he had memorized, it was no longer impossible… barely. He had the snapshot of what a completed rune would appear as, and even if each rune were formed in an incredibly complex configuration, he could slowly piece it together. The only issue was that he was under a time constraint. "Fuck you Nemesis," Rowan growled again and set his mind to the task. A part of himself could not help but think if Nemesis truly existed, cursing him would likely make his situation worse. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶 Rowan separated his limited consciousness into many smaller parts, the largest of which became a sort of blank drawing board where he placed copies of all the pieces of the runes swirling around his consciousness, and like a gigantic puzzle made up of many billions of moving parts, he began to fit them together. His consciousness dances between the completed runes and the shattered ones, noting outlines, dimensions, depths, color, sensations, and millions of other micro components that make up a higher-order language. Rowan's innate talent in language comprehension made this task marginally easier because he had an uncanny ability to spot patterns and tease out fragments of meaning from the chaos. He sank into this task and time slowly lost meaning, and when he came up for air, he discovered that nearly thirty percent of his body had been consumed and he had barely gone through two percent of the entire runic arrangement. These two percent he was able to complete was the hardest part of the entire puzzle. With his diminished consciousness power, without his many quirks and sheer grit, it would have been impossible for him to succeed. Yet it was only the beginning and he was falling far behind. Perhaps he was too deep underground and his perception was too weak but he could not detect the changes of the seasons in this place, but his internal clock following the rigid flow of time of reality outside this place informed him that he had spent a quarter of a century inside this crater since the moment of his descent.