MY 10,000× DIMENSIONAL SYSTEM

Chapter 136 Choice and Speculation

Choice and Speculation

In the end, Christopher started to head for the center of the Hidden realm.

However, he was in no hurry and moved at a somewhat leisurely pace. Granted, the place was so big that he doubted he would reach the center in a short amount of time even if he went at full speed.

That, and he used the time as an opportunity to learn more things from his current mark, Constella, who seemed more committed to acquiring the Cryo Cores and finding the rest of her entourage than heading to the center.

Not that Christopher was complaining, he learned new things with each passing moment, and his knowledge would only increase at this rate.

However, he wasn't idle.

As it would turn out, the continuous whiteness of the Hidden realm could make one bored very easily. While there were some unique sights here and there, whether they were interesting natural formations of unique beasts, one was bound to get bored easily.

As a result, Christopher found himself getting bored.

He hadn't yet encountered another Apex-ranked entity like the Drake be killed, and everything else was too weak to garner his interest.

So he made a decision, or two.

He stopped flying, and when he landed, he immediately deactivated all the passive abilities he had for protection, so besides the Transcendent barrier he couldn't turn off for some reason, none of the barriers he had in place in case of a sudden attack were active.

And he took it a step further. He swapped out his armor, Jormungandr's Mantle, for clothes that were simply durable enough to not get destroyed by a slightly strong force. Though he kept his mask.

Then he started jogging.

That said, at his level, even a 'light' jog was far beyond normal comprehension, and he was crossing vast distances with each step. But compared to his previous pace where he was flying, it was a snail's pace.

As for why he was doing this, well, Christopher decided to use this as an opportunity to truly test himself.

He hadn't encountered much... or any hardship, since he broke through to the Apex rank and upgraded his Dimension to its current stage.

In a way, he wanted to keep it like that. To make it so that regardless of the situation or regardless of who he fought against, he would always have an insurmountable advantage that put to shame the countless years of effort his enemies put into reaching whatever level they were at.

However, even with his incredible Affinity towards Fate, certain things were still unclear to him, meaning he could still be caught off guard by certain events. A prime example of this would be what happened with him and the beings that forced the system to put him into hibernation.

In short, the future was still unpredictable. In the long term anyway. So Christopher didn't want to be caught lacking because he was too complacent.

So what he was doing right now was simple. He was handicapping himself so that he could move through the hidden realm with the idea that he could be in danger, true danger.

While he would never throw his life away for a reason such as that, he wanted to use this as a chance to temper himself. Because something else he realized which he didn't want to admit, but had to since it was the truth, was that his foundation was kinda trash.

Yes, he had reached a very high level in a very short amount of time and had abilities that many would kill for. But in the grand scheme of things, Christopher was still lacking quite a bit.

For starters, he lacked experience, a lot of it. So far, he had dealt with his enemies using overwhelming force. But what would happen if he faced someone equal to him, but had fought far more battles and had a much greater battle IQ than him?

In fact, that had happened already, in his fight against the Void's avatar. The only reason he won that fight was because he had the means to completely overpower the Void. Otherwise, he'd have died after that initial world-cutting slash.

That's why he decided, that instead of simply moping about how bored he was, he'd use this time to temper himself and fix up his weaknesses. He has an absurd amount of means at his disposal, and he would only have himself to blame if he suffered for not using them.

That's why, even after all the previous handicaps, he also committed to using Scarlet and Norn less, or more specifically, he asked them to put a cap on how effective they could be as opposed to their usual output. Then he did the same to himself and placed a limiter on the amount of energy he could draw from the Dimension before having to rely on his own energy reserves. This was to force him to learn how to better utilise his energy and reduce wastage, sacrificing quantity for efficiency.

"Huu~" Christopher exhaled as he jogged. It felt a bit strange. Without his usual means of protection, he felt naked, but because of that same reason, he found himself unconsciously observing his surroundings better, which was what he wanted. Or one of the things anyway.

As such, he wouldn't be complacent and be more prepared for things like unforeseen attacks, and make use of his senses more to prevent being jumped by something that had the ability to bypass his defenses. The universe was filled with strange beings and entities, Christopher wouldn't be surprised if someone or something out there had some uncanny ability to ignore all forms of defense to deal damage to someone.

So Christopher wanted to root out his usual habit of only dodging when he felt like it.

Other than that though, Christopher had another goal.

Up until now, he hadn't been able to figure out what the deal with Fate was in this place.

So far, he had judged it to be unpredictable with no pattern whatsoever. However, he had never stopped observing it, him and Aisha that is. And he noticed something odd.

He still couldn't read Fate, effectively anyway, but he could still observe the Fate in this place, and after continuous observation, the two of them noticed something odd.

At first glance, it would seem as though the Fate had no rhyme or pattern whatsoever, but when one thought about it, that made no sense.

This was because destroyed strands of fate would stop existing, and from their point of view, the various Fate threads looked broken and shattered, yet they still persisted. Which was impossible.

Moreover, if the Fate of something was destroyed, the thing that Fate belonged to followed suit as they would cease to exist. A prime example of this is Norn's ability to wipe beings from existence by erasing their Fate. And we see something similar with Christopher's mask's Faceless ability completely erases his fate, be it past, present, and future, from the wider tapestry. So while not destroying it, its effects give off a similar feeling. Experience tales at empire

However, if the fate of this realm was destroyed, the threads would vanish, and the Realm would cease to exist.

But it was still here.

The moment the two of them came to this realisation, they both had a similar thought. Something was influencing and purposefully scrambling the fate of the entire realm and its inhabitants. But why?

They could make a few speculations. But Norn directly told them that the tampering was focused on everyone within the Realm the most.

Which posed the question. Why?

'My first guess is that the will of the Paragon who owns this realm persists and is manipulating things to achieve a certain result, what that result is is another mystery.' Aisha said and Christopher hummed.

'I can make a few guesses. The biggest one is that it wants to take over someone's body to pretty much bring itself back to life.' Christopher said calmly and felt sure of his guess. Otherwise, he couldn't grasp why something as old as the will of a long-dead Paragon would be screwing with the fate of those that entered its realm besides maybe entertainment.

'But in that case, how come it simply didn't pick any of the people from the previous entries? Was it not satisfied with what it saw? And if so, then what does one need to do to be eligible for... possession?' Aisha questioned and Christopher had a pretty easy answer to that.

'For a being that has been waiting for universe knows how long, they would naturally want the best of the best when it comes to possessing another body for their own. And the fact that so much time has passed since the first cycle means that it's very patient. So there's no way it would settle for less. As for the best way to judge who was good enough, I'm pretty sure that blizzard in the center of the realm would be a good judge.' When Christopher finished, he frowned a little bit as a question hit him, but he disregarded it.