WHIRRRRR…
The massive, holographic Wheel of Causality spun with a deafening, high-pitched hum that drowned out the howling wind of the Dead Ridges outside.
Alden sat cross-legged on the hard stone floor of the narrow fissure, his single crimson eye locked onto the blinding blur of colors. The light from the system interface bathed the small cave in a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of grey, green, blue, purple, and the terrifying, jagged gold of the mythic tier.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
He didn't have his SSS+ Luck stat to rig the game. He was entirely at the mercy of raw, unfiltered multiverse probability. He could pull a rusty spoon, or he could pull a weapon that could cleave a continent in half.
The wheel began to slow.
Tick… tick… tick…
The golden needle at the top clicked against the dividing lines. It crawled past a brilliant white segment, sliding agonizingly over a dull grey sliver, before inching toward a vibrant, deep purple section.
Alden held his breath. Purple. S-Rank.
The needle hovered right on the edge of the purple and a mundane green sliver. With one final, dying breath of momentum, the wheel clicked exactly one more time.
Tick.
It stopped dead in the center of the deep, swirling purple.
Alden let out a massive, shuddering exhale, his shoulders slumping in sheer relief. It wasn't the abyssal black of an SSS+ Rank, but an S-Rank reward was nothing short of a miracle on an unrigged, blind roll.
[DING!]
The massive wheel shattered into millions of glowing purple particles, raining down and dissolving before they hit the cave floor. The dark, gold-laced interface expanded, burning crisp white text into the air.
[Congratulations, Host.]
[You have successfully drawn an S-Rank Reward from the Wheel of Causality.]
[Reward Acquired: 'Manual of the Abyssal Weaver']
[Type: S-Rank Passive/Active Skill Book]
VWOOM—
Space distorted directly in front of Alden's chest. A thick, ancient-looking tome materialized out of thin air and dropped heavily into his waiting hands. The cover was forged from a strange, leathery dark-blue material, bound in cold iron chains that lacked a padlock.
Alden stared at the heavy book, his red eye scanning the system description that popped up next to it.
[Item Description: A lost cultivation technique originally designed by the Void-Dwellers of the outer cosmos. It was created specifically to tame, weave, and manipulate highly volatile, hostile energies that refuse to be controlled by natural laws.]
[Effect 1: Increases the Host's mana control over the 'Chaos' element by 800%.]
[Effect 2: Reduces internal physical blowback from hostile mana circulation by 70%.]
[System Prompt: Would you like to consume the Skill Book and integrate the knowledge?]
[ YES / NO ]
Alden didn't just press 'YES'. He practically punched the holographic button.
This was exactly what he needed. It wasn't a nuke. It wasn't a god-killing sword. It was the steering wheel to his runaway, explosive engine.
The ancient tome in his hands instantly dissolved into a stream of pure, deep-purple light. The light shot directly into the center of Alden's forehead.
Alden gasped, his spine snapping rigidly straight.
It didn't hurt like the Nephalem bloodline integration, but the sheer volume of information flooding his brain was staggering. He saw visions of alien skies, of ancient beings sitting in absolute voids, spinning threads of pure, destructive dark matter around their fingers like harmless yarn. He understood the breathing techniques, the precise mental locks required, and the exact spiritual pathways needed to funnel explosive energy without shattering the vessel.
The purple light faded.
Alden slumped forward, panting heavily, sweat beading on his forehead beneath the matte-black metal mask.
He closed his eye. He didn't wait. He immediately put the knowledge to the test.
He looked inward, staring down the dark-gold, abyssal vortex of Chaos mana spinning aggressively near his dantian. Usually, trying to pull from that core was like trying to grab a handful of angry hornets.
Alden adjusted his breathing, shifting into the specific, rhythmic cadence of the Abyssal Weaver. He didn't try to forcefully command the mana. Instead, he visualized a loom. He mentally reached out with the new technique, gently hooking a single, microscopic thread of the volatile dark-gold energy.
The Chaos mana hissed, resisting instinctively.
But Alden held the mental lock. He pulled.
Slowly, smoothly, a perfectly stable, incredibly dense thread of dark-gold energy rose from the core. It didn't explode. It didn't shatter his ribs. It flowed cleanly up his arm, pooling in the palm of his right hand.
Alden opened his red eye.
Hovering just above his black-gloved palm was a perfectly spherical, humming ball of pure Chaos mana. It was stable.
A slow, profound smile spread across his face beneath the mask.
'I did it,' Alden thought, closing his fist and letting the mana safely dissipate back into his core.
'I finally have the leash.'
He wasn't a master yet. The technique only reduced the blowback by seventy percent, which meant utilizing massive, S-Rank tier spells would still likely break his bones, but basic circulation and combat enhancement were now firmly within his grasp. He was no longer a walking, suicidal time bomb.
Alden leaned back against the warm stone of the thermal vent, letting the adrenaline completely bleed out of his system.
He pulled his thick fur-lined cloak tighter around himself, listening to the muffled howling of the blizzard outside the fissure. For the first time in a month, Alden closed his eye and fell into a deep, genuinely peaceful sleep.
***
The morning brought no sunlight to the Dead Ridges.
The sky was a bruised, oppressive grey, choked with thick, swirling snow that reduced visibility to less than thirty yards. The wind was a physical force, battering against the jagged obsidian peaks with deafening hostility.
Alden stepped out of the narrow rock fissure, his boots sinking deep into the fresh snowdrifts.
He was fully geared. The matte-black mask forged by Herman Blackwood completely obscured his features, leaving only his glowing crimson right eye visible through the narrow slit. The heavy, dark-grey winter cloak wrapped around his lean frame, hiding the hilt of Vajra strapped securely to his waist.
He tapped his temple, accessing the coordinates.
'Due South,' Alden muttered, his breath venting through the micro-perforations in the metal mask. 'About another forty miles through this wasteland.'
He began to walk.
The journey was brutal, but Alden was a fundamentally different creature now. When he encountered sheer, impassable walls of black ice, he didn't climb them until his fingers bled. Instead, he channeled a thin, perfectly controlled layer of Chaos mana to the soles of his boots, literally degrading the frictionless ice to create perfect, secure footholds.
When a pack of Frost-Stalkers—massive, six-legged wolves with hides like glacial ice—tried to ambush him from a snowbank, Alden didn't even draw his sword.
He simply sidestepped the lead wolf's lunge, grabbed the beast by its thick neck, and channeled a controlled pulse of Chaos mana directly into its spine. The dark-gold energy instantly devoured the beast's nervous system. It dropped dead without a sound. The rest of the pack took one look at the unnatural, terrifyingly precise kill and immediately scattered into the blizzard.
'The Abyssal Weaver technique is incredible,' Alden thought, shaking the frost off his gloves as he continued his trek.
'No wasted energy. No broken bones. Just clean, absolute disruption.'
He moved through the whiteout conditions for six hours, the repetitive crunch of snow beneath his boots the only sound keeping him company.
As he navigated a particularly narrow ravine, flanked on both sides by towering, razor-sharp walls of obsidian, something caught his eye.
Alden stopped.
He squinted through the driving snow, his A-Rank perception cutting through the visual interference.
About fifty yards ahead, resting at the base of the ravine wall, was a splash of color that absolutely did not belong in the Dead Ridges. It wasn't the white of snow, the black of obsidian, or the grey of the sky.
It was a deep, rich crimson.
Alden's hand instinctively drifted to the hilt of Vajra. He didn't draw the weapon, but he lowered his center of gravity, shifting into a silent, predatory glide as he approached the anomaly.
As he drew closer, the shape resolved.
It was a person.
Lying face down in the deep snow was a figure wrapped in a heavy, tattered crimson travel cloak.
Alden stopped ten feet away. He didn't immediately rush forward. This was the Dead Ridges. People didn't just take leisurely strolls out here. This was either a trap, an illusion cast by a high-tier beast, or someone who had made a catastrophically bad life decision.
He flared his perception, probing the area.
No hidden beasts. No magical tripwires. Just the faint, incredibly weak, and rapidly fading heartbeat of the figure in the snow.
Alden sighed, a puff of white mist escaping his mask.
'I should just walk past,' Alden thought, his pragmatic survival instincts warring with the tiny, annoying shred of humanity he hadn't managed to completely burn away yet.
'I have a hundred-billion-gold bounty. I am actively trying to stay off the radar.'
He took a step to the left, fully intending to walk around the dying stranger.
He took another step.
Then he stopped, gritting his teeth in sheer annoyance.
"Curiosity and a misplaced hero complex," Alden muttered to the wind.
"The two things that are absolutely going to get me killed in this world."
He stepped forward, kneeling beside the unmoving figure.
He reached out, grabbing the shoulder of the crimson cloak, and gently rolled the person over onto their back.
The heavy hood fell away.
Alden froze.
It was a girl. She looked to be around his age, maybe a year or two younger.
Her hair was a striking, immaculate jet-black, spilling out across the pristine white snow like spilled ink. Her skin was incredibly pale, though currently tinged with the sickly, bluish hue of severe hypothermia. Her features were delicate, aristocratic, and undeniably, breath-takingly beautiful, even in her near-death state.
She wore a set of dark, form-fitting leather armor beneath the crimson cloak, lined with intricate, muted silver runes that looked completely foreign to Alden.
But Alden didn't give a damn about her beauty.
His crimson eye narrowed sharply, entirely unimpressed.
'Who wanders into an active death zone wearing light leather armor and a bright red cape?' Alden critiqued internally.
'She looks like she dressed for a noble's hunting retreat, not the Dead Ridges.'
He pulled his glove off and pressed two fingers against the side of her icy neck.
Her pulse was there, but it was thready. Barely a flutter.
"Hey," Alden said, his voice deep and slightly metallic through the mask. He lightly tapped her frozen cheek. "Wake up. If you sleep here, you're not waking up again."
No response.
Alden clicked his tongue. He couldn't use his Chaos mana to warm her—the destructive element would simply erase her cells.
He reached into his storage ring and pulled out a heavy, fur-lined dwarven blanket, throwing it over her shivering form. He grabbed her by the shoulders, intending to drag her to a nearby windbreak formed by two overlapping boulders just to get her out of the direct gale.
As he hauled her up slightly, the sudden movement jarred her.
The girl gasped, a sharp, ragged intake of freezing air.
Her eyelids fluttered, then slowly peeled open.
Alden stopped moving.
Her eyes were striking. They were a vivid, luminescent violet, glowing faintly even in the dim light of the blizzard.
For a second, the violet eyes were clouded with confusion and the haze of near-death exhaustion. She stared up at the terrifying, masked figure looming over her, the singular glowing crimson eye staring back down.
A normal person would have screamed. A normal person would have thanked the gods for a savior.
The girl did neither.
Her violet eyes sharpened instantly, snapping from confusion to absolute, haughty hostility in a fraction of a microsecond.
Before Alden could even speak, the girl weakly, but incredibly aggressively, swatted his hand away from her shoulder.
"Unhand me," she rasped, her voice trembling from the cold but dripping with an unmistakable, deeply ingrained arrogance.
"Do not dare touch me with those filthy gloves, you peasant."
Alden blinked.
He knelt there in the freezing snow, the biting wind howling around them, staring at the half-dead girl who had just insulted the person currently keeping her from becoming a permanent ice sculpture.
He slowly pulled his hand back, resting his arm on his knee.
"Peasant?" Alden repeated, his voice dangerously flat behind the metal mask.
The girl tried to push herself up onto her elbows, shivering violently, her teeth chattering so hard they clicked. She glared at him, her violet eyes flashing with indignant fury.
"I said what I said," she sneered weakly, clutching the dwarven blanket Alden had just given her tighter around her shoulders as if she owned it.
"Identify yourself immediately. Which minor lord's banner do you serve? And why took you so long to find me?"
Alden stared at her for five long, agonizingly silent seconds.
He didn't get angry. He didn't yell.
He just let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh.
'I knew it,' Alden thought, completely deadpan.
'I should have just walked past.'
"Right," Alden said smoothly, standing up and brushing the snow off his knees. He looked down at the shivering, glaring girl.
"My mistake. Clearly, you have this handled. Enjoy the blizzard, Your Highness."
Alden turned his back on her, adjusted his travel pack, and began walking away down the ravine without a single backward glance.
"Wait!" the girl croaked, a sudden, sharp spike of genuine panic finally piercing her arrogant facade as she watched the masked figure actually abandon her.
"Where are you going?! You can't just leave me here!"
Alden didn't stop walking.
"Watch me," Alden called back over his shoulder, his dark trench coat disappearing into the swirling white snow.