The promised destruction delivered its fury. Within minutes, the entire landscape transformed—the red sands of the desert, like dried blood, had diminished drastically.
The sandstone beneath the desert lay devastatingly shattered and torn apart. Now, a vast crater surrounded the dome of air, which wasn’t a dome at all but rather a massive sphere of impenetrable darkness.
Now that Northern viewed the complete picture of the wind sphere, he could see that the darkness was also part of Ul’s machinations.
Perhaps some element designed to help her pin Kryos down. The fact that he couldn’t see through it, though, gnawed at him. He wanted to know how the battle was unfolding.
But simultaneously, he worried more about Terence. In this conflict, he had deliberately set their differences aside. In truth, Terence wasn’t a bad person—she’d simply made a naive decision.
And we all make naive decisions.
Northern himself remembered making countless such choices. This could be a fresh start for all of them. Maybe they could finally call each other friends without prejudice.
But for that to happen, Terence was trapped within that cursed sphere, and Northern refused to let her die.
Which was why, even though shattering the air sphere was dangerous, Northern felt he had no alternative.
That task, however, had proven far more daunting than expected. Even after leveling the ground with outrageous, unbelievable power, Northern still faced the same obstacle.
He drifted closer to the sphere and pressed his hand against the wall of darkness before him. It felt like touching thick, frigid metal.
Northern scowled.
"This is far more sophisticated than Roughsburg’s pathetic tricks."
Of course, he called Roughsburg’s space talent pathetic because, compared to this astounding construction, that’s exactly what it was—mere child’s play.
Northern stared ahead for several moments, then exhaled heavily.
’Looks like I’ll have to summon Abyss Tyrant. But...’
Northern stubbornly shook his head.
’Easy way out... no!’
He frowned and began circling the sphere, studying it intently, analyzing every detail.
’There must be something... there has to be a weakness. No construct is flawless—even Origination has a beginning and an end. Perfection is just an illusion. There has to be a flaw.’
Northern pondered this as he orbited the sphere. It loomed as large as a mountain’s base and felt like a cocoon of pure darkness.
The shadows made perception nearly impossible, but Northern possessed exceptional eyes.
He halted, eyes narrowing.
"My eyes..."
A slight smile curved his lips.
Northern recalled something crucial from his past life, which surprised him since nothing from that existence had ever proven useful. In fact, he’d never once lived as he had before.
Remembering now felt like recalling a fragment of a dream forgotten for ages.
He whispered the words:
"Seeing is believing."
Northern felt the eyes were designed to be deceived whenever this phrase was uttered. To see the obvious, to believe the obvious—but the obvious was merely a facade.
He’d always thought: wouldn’t that make the eyes our greatest enemy? Northern did possess special eyes, but right now, he had no clue how they functioned. And as desperate as he was to explore them, he didn’t know how. There were no special runes for the eyes. It was more inherent than the system could help with and it was only when he discovered its usage would the system be able to create words for it.
Instead, there was something about the sense of touch that confirmed reality’s authenticity. Not easily fooled, if one wasn’t careless, of course.
But here’s the thing—Northern had miraculously discovered a new way to perceive the world through his body and heat, thanks to Burning Storm.
Yet he felt there might be an even superior talent for this purpose.
"If I recall correctly, Sun Legacy has a talent... Omni-Thermic Sense!"
Northern summoned the talent’s runes and focused on the one he sought.
Omni-Thermic Sense: [You can perceive thermal fluctuations across all matter within your sensory domain. It is not sight, sound, or spiritual sense—it is the awareness of temperature itself. Heat, cold, and every gradient between].
Indeed, it was perfect for this scenario.
Northern sighed and closed his eyes, then channeled the ability.
In the suffocating darkness, waves of different colors slowly materialized—white waves, red waves, blue waves. All flowed at nearly the same pace, yet not quite identical. The red waves flowed in reverse to the blue waves, while the white waves remained stagnant.
But their movement resembled an optical illusion, which was fortunate since Northern wasn’t relying on sight.
’The eyes truly are easily deceived.’
With his eyes closed, Northern began to move, gliding around the sphere.
The waves formed a layer encircling the structure—proof that the sphere itself was a construct emitting heat, though at the same level as the surrounding world.
Northern could perceive the sequence of waves forming the sphere and all others in the air. It was identical. But he refused to surrender and continued circling the sphere.
He had orbited the sphere twice and discovered nothing.
Still he flew, searching more keenly, more intently, while his mind worked in parallel.
’Let’s say Ul’s cleverer than me—it’s expected she wouldn’t make her construct’s weakness so obvious.’
Maybe Origins didn’t require such vulnerabilities, but Ul was currently weakened herself. Being weak often forced one to be exceptionally cunning.
Northern halted and gazed down at the sphere’s base then at the top too.
He hadn’t examined the sphere’s dome with heat, though he suspected that would be even more obvious than the sides, which had supposedly been buried underground before he’d leveled everything.
With his eyes closed, he concentrated on the bottom. The waves remained visible, yet nothing seemed unusual.
But Northern sensed something was wrong—something Chaos Eyes would have detected instantly. Chaos Eyes was gone, though.
’Perhaps this is where I tell myself: grow, you fucking bastard!’
Northern opened his eyes.
’You should be able to pierce beyond the obvious, you pathetic excuse for an eye. Aren’t you called Infinite-Eyes?’
Northern tried to recall the sensation of Omni-Thermic Sense, but instead of using his body as the sensory medium, he would see it with his eyes.
His blue eyes radiated chilling light. The black rings within them seemed to shift—for a moment there was nothing, and the next, Northern’s worldview transformed completely.