World of Rules

.... 

"Di" regained consciousness.

The immense pressure emanating from the small purple skull had vanished, and the skull itself fell to the ground with a faint thud.. as if it had lost its soul.

"Di" remained silent.

His body stood still, his eyes closed, as if he was still trying to process what he had seen... or perhaps, what he had felt.

Heavy moments passed.

Not filled with tension, but with stillness..

the kind of stillness that follows great storms,

when nothing remains but debris.

Then, quietly, he opened his eyes.

That indifferent expression returned to his face,

void of fear, shock, or pain.

As if everything he had witnessed... wasn't worth reacting to.

Or perhaps, simply,

he no longer possessed the luxury of feeling.

"Di" looked down at the caravan master's corpse lying before him.

It hadn't been long since he had killed him.. only a few seconds.

Yet to him...

it had felt like eons.

Years of realization, of shock, of the collapse of everything he knew.

One glimpse... was enough to overturn his very existence.

He took a deep breath.

Not to calm himself,

but as if to reassemble his shattered self.

"The Ninth Layer..."

He whispered internally,

a coldness creeping into his bones.. not from fear, but from awareness.

An awareness that he had glimpsed something far beyond logic.

And that, despite all he had achieved...

he was still at the very bottom.

He knelt down, picked up the purple skull, and stared at it for a moment.

Then, quietly, he placed it inside a leather pouch and stood up.

There was nothing more to say.

The beast within him had seen what awaited at the peak...

And now, it would never stop.

"Di" grabbed the caravan master's corpse without mercy,

as if it had never been a person, but merely a discarded prey.

He glanced around briefly.

The area was still silent, the air saturated with remnants of deadly aura,

the void itself groaning from the aftermath of what had occurred.

Darkness consumed him.

His figure disappeared,

as if space itself had closed its pages upon him.

He hadn't gone far.

He stopped at a desolate, muddy place, devoid of life.. a small cave within a rock hollow, barely large enough to fit two bodies.

But it was enough.

Enough to remain hidden, even if only temporarily.

He squatted down, still holding the caravan master's corpse by the neck, letting it dangle lifelessly like a puppet with its strings cut.

He closed his eyes.

And it took only seconds...

Before the corpse began to decay.

The skin rotted away, the flesh eroded, and the bones pushed outward,

as if desperate to escape.

The process felt... disturbingly natural.

He did not open his eyes,

but his breathing changed.

The place grew darker,

as if light itself feared to approach.

Any ordinary eye could tell that something strange was happening...

As if the laws of heaven and earth were being rewritten around "Di."

As if the world itself was bending its rules for him.

To break through to the second layer,

every Domain Master must comprehend a second law..

To merge with a new fundamental truth of existence.

But "Di"...

Had already broken through to the second layer once before.

He had already touched the Law of Darkness.

Yet that did not guarantee an easy breakthrough.

For understanding a law was not the same as mastering it.

And despite all he had witnessed, despite the terror that had flooded his consciousness...

The path now was not easier.

It was harsher.

Time passed.

A full day went by.

And the only change was that the darkness grew heavier.

It wrapped around "Di" like a cocoon, layer after layer, wall upon wall,

Until it seemed that the cave itself had vanished,

that even the sky had been erased, leaving behind nothing but pure void.

It was like a slow death...

Not of the body,

but of existence itself.

Then...

Slowly, the darkness began to withdraw.

As if some hidden entity had commanded it to retreat.

Layer by layer, it was pulled back, dissolved, leaving behind something... different.

And at the heart of that endless void...

Sat "Di," still motionless, still with his eyes closed.

His face was devoid of all signs of life.

Yet he was not dead.

He was like a body on the verge of being reborn.

...