Chapter 539: Push Through
Sylas took deep breaths as he appeared on the cloudy road once again. He felt as though he had already hit his limit. Despite the sudden surge at the end, his brain was almost entirely drained. It was difficult for him to even breathe properly. It was like all the nerves in his body were overloaded.
Without knowing the exact reason he was struggling so much, his gaze couldn't help but be solemn. It was no wonder Nosphaleen took Rune Breath so seriously. Excavating one's potential in this Rune Mastery Realm wasn't easy by any means.
Even if he knew he was struggling so much because of the suppression on Earth's Runes, his reaction wouldn't be much different. That was because whoever could do this-suppressing a generation of Rune Masters-was definitely on a level he couldn't fathom.
He would have to push himself even harder.
With his jaw set, he walked toward the seventh door.
When he entered, he exhaled a long, cold breath.
It wasn't a nine-by-nine grid like he was expecting. Instead, it was a three-by-three grid once again... or so it seemed until it was multiplied three times over.
Before him, a three-by-three-by-three cube floated, each cubicle within carrying a different Rune.
Although there was a core Rune he could take advantage of this time, the configurations were so much more numerous that it was impossible to fathom.
Now that he needed to consider not just the two-dimensional aspects but the three- dimensional, it was like there were far more than just 27 Runes before him.
If each of the Runes had dozens of configurations they could be rotated into, then he was being asked to arrange that many Runes. Rather than 27 Runes, there might as well be thousands in front of him now.
This cube might seem to be on a smaller scale than the eight-by-eight grid he had just completed, but its level of complexity was on a whole other level.
Sylas took a breath and felt that he was at a crossroads. His mind was mush, and there were still two more doors after this, which were undoubtedly severalfold more complicated.
But for some reason, he didn't want to give up. He felt like he was letting someone else win, even if it didn't make any sense.
The feeling of discomfort was subtle, and he somewhat felt like it was an itch at the back of his mind. Something inside of him was stoked, and he almost glared at the cube-shaped grid hovering before him.
A flicker of a flame danced within his eyes, and he focused on the task at hand.
At that moment, it was like a dam had broken in his mind. He didn't have a sudden breakthrough. It was instead like he was a person who was staring at the answers he needed right in front of him yet hadn't noticed until now.
With Rune Soul matched with his visualization, he was already naturally able to see Runes in a three-dimensional form. But why was it that he had only been considering one aspect of them until now?
He had been lulled into that sense of security because the grids until now had all been two- dimensional, so he was only considering what the Runes looked like straight on. He didn't even think to rotate them.
He closed his eyes, going back as he tried to think through something.
When he returned to the puzzle of the second door, he realized the 136 configurations for the core Runes could all be used. All he had to do was likewise change the configuration of the surrounding Runes, rotating them here and there.
He had always been under the assumption that these grids only had one solution. Maybe there was only one perfect solution, and that was the solution he had been chasing all along, but there were certainly several other possibilities as well.
However, just because those other possibilities weren't perfect didn't mean that they wouldn't help in finding the best solution.
When you were working with the laws of the world, a single Stroke or Foundation could have several functions that it could possibly execute. There was just one water molecule in existence, but that didn't mean that it could be in a state of liquid, solid, or gas, nor did it mean that it couldn't have different ways it acted while under high pressure or low pressure.
But each one could be considered water no less than any of the others.
Hydro dams and steam engines both used water to generate power, but the methods in which they did so couldn't have been more different.
The various configurations of a Rune and how he could fit them together were much the same. Trying to fit himself into one box would have always been foolish.
However, because the Runes were nonsense Runes without form or function, Sylas' analytical mind had a hard time looking at them like he normally did, so he tried to brute-force it through other methods.
Ironically, whether it was his disposition or the fact he already had Rune Soul, they had only held him back in this respect.
First, he tried to calculate it rigorously, then when that was slowing down, he used his Rune Soul to force them to flow to the correct configuration. When instead...
Sylas pulled on the laws of the world, and the Runes shifted and began to spin.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
As though gears snapping into place, they resonated at each step until they settled into one position. Then, the Runes began to swap and shift in relation to one another.
At that moment, a piercing light shot up, striking a hole through the canopy of the Secret Realm.
The glow of Sylas' eyes only grew fiercer. He didn't care to see the end of the phenomena, leaving and entering the eighth door, only to leave it soon after and enter the ninth.
The Secret Realm shook.
Sylas finally awoke from his state of focus, blinking.
'Something is happening...'