Seeing the connection to the sphere on the right he knew, of course, that was the one he had to pick.

He explained what he'd found to Perumah, and she looked inquisitively at the planet as well.

"Do you know why? I believe you said their karmic connections had disappeared before."

"They did, but now it's back. Looking through them though, I'm finding that Boris and Jean are still gone, I can only find Jacob. I believe this has something to do with the Karma curse placed on him. The report said something about guaranteeing that something was going to happen in the future, perhaps the curse hid their connections from me after they teleported so I wouldn't be able to interfere in the process. To think… they went to another planet?"

"Does your connection with Jacob ensure he is alive, or that is the last place linked with him karmically?"

"I don't know. I hope he's alive, because I want to get the full story out of him, but we will just have to see."

He linked Perumah with himself and charged up his Void mana, casting Roving Gate and throwing the other end off into the distance. Immediately, he felt it hit something of a wall and let himself be carried through.

He arrived at something of a barrier. Right after he closed the gate to Earth, it was like he sat in the upper atmosphere around it. He hadn't tried reaching out to it, but looking back, it would've been weird if he could just travel back down and experience life in some weird mirror dimension.

The anchor planets appeared to have some natural defense that prevented anything in the space between worlds from getting too close, and this was what he now had to pass through to reach his target.

It wasn't difficult though; the connection he had with Jacob carried him to the exact weak point in the barrier, the single opening he needed only widen.

Once again he was over one of the poles. Rather than seeing ice, though, he saw an archipelago wherein every island was covered in beige sand, the fractured landmass expanding for hundreds of miles.

Opening the portal, he stepped through and saw there was nothing but water beneath his feet, so he had to float slightly.

That barely registered though, because he was blasted with prickling waves of heat from all directions.

Divine Balance started to freak out, and Knowledge told him the spell was getting overwhelmed. He got a bad feeling, and pushed Perumah right back through the portal, stepping into the void between worlds once more.

The pressing sensation abated, but something was carried through with him. His muscles went limp and his blood started boiling. He wanted to gasp for air, but there was none.

He didn't feel close to dying, but it was horribly unpleasant.

Divine Balanced worked overtime to repair his cells and stitch up holes in his soul, while Dei tried to figure out exactly what was happening.

Looking closer, he found two aggressive forms of magic, though both felt insubstantial. They were not affinities, but they were clearly self-replicating.

Both mana types formed globs within him, not mixing with any of his others nor each other. The harm came from how they created mana dead-zones within his body and soul. His state as a Union or, in this case, a World that Walks, meant he was composed of magic, concepts baked deeply into his very flesh.

When the opposing mana rushed to invade his body, it successfully extinguished everything imbued into him, causing Dei to start rapidly decaying as parts of himself were rejected by the rest for being too foreign.

Magical radiation gave him super-cancer.

Using Knowledge, he was able to observe the almost thinking nature of Divine Balance. The first thing it did was try to deactivate his body's natural healing so that it would stop tearing itself apart, but quickly turned it back on when the foreign mana started branching out and taking over some of his flesh.

Next it just pushed harder against the mana, trying to exhaust it- and actually found a measure of success. When competing with Dei's own mana, the foreign mass was slowly corrupted, but it wasn't good. Divine Balance ruled that this was unsustainable long-term, and sought a better way.

Instead, it pit the two against each other, pushing the mana types to clash, but they just wouldn't mix at all or interact in any way.

He expected to feel exasperation from the spell, but that was just him personifying it. The spell was a soulless construct, and what it tried next made his head hurt.

Since it'd failed to find a "Clever" solution, it just threw everything and the kitchen sink at the two mana types.

Though they had no affinity, they did have concepts to them- everything did. They didn't have anything like Dei's concept, the one where he pit two things against each other, but mana carried energy and information; the Divine Balance within him sought to oppose the informational aspect of it, unraveling the entire thing.

The only issue was that the information wasn't defined enough to read. It had personalized, local meaning, and nothing else.

'It's Null mana!' Dei realized, 'These two types are Null mana! That's why it's so toxic to me, because I'm a being of magic and it's ripping me apart! That's why there's meaning in each one, but no affinities. But holy shit, this is some powerful Null mana. Whoever made these has to have a ton of Rights to have their Null be this strong.'

Without a way to read into the information and without any alternative, Divine Balance just started blasting them with different concepts, starting wide and narrowing it down when one of the mana types responded to something.

"Earth/Air/Water- Response, negative, noted- Fire- Positive, noted- Narrow down to Water. Surface water/Lake water/Rain water/Ocean water/ Depths water- Response, negative, noted, narrow down further. Bioluminescence depths water- Response, partially positive, noted- Abyssal depths water/Darkness depths water- Response, fully negative."

The first mana type seriously hated the concept of "Darkness depths water," whatever that meant, so Divine Balance cranked that concept to ten within him, and Dei saw as it finally went up in smoke.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The second mana type underwent a much similar process, though it required far more extensive testing.

Unlike the first, it had nothing to do with the basic "Earth, Air, Water, Fire," stuff, so his spell had to try hundreds of different ideas, going down some invisible list of stuff until it finally found something that clicked

"Business- Response, laterally negative? Further testing required-"

The second mana didn't hate Business, but it flinched when presented with it, as if Business resembled something terrible.

Eventually, it was found that the second mana type hated Community, or anything social. Its exact weakness was a concept called "Connectedness to loving bonds," a strange mouthful but it still worked.

Now armed, Divine Balance went to work exorcizing the contaminants within him. It wasn't easy, but the progress was much faster than it'd been previously, only taking around thirty minutes whereas the mana would've naturally taken weeks to dissipate before.

While it did that, his mind was finally freed enough to answer Perumah's question of "What's wrong?" which she asked right after he pushed her back into the void around ten or so seconds ago.

"Sorry about that, the air in the new universe was incredibly toxic to me, are you doing fine? Was your body able to adjust, or was it never even a problem for you since you're not a mana-based life form?"

Perumah shrugged, "I never suffered from it. My cloak fed off some of my mana and pushed something away, which I assume is the contaminant you speak of. Even now, it continues to adjust to the laws of the new reality, as I have chosen that as the designation for it to adapt to."

'Her cloak does it for her without even the slightest effort? Lucky! Still, I'd rather mine because I'd be too afraid to destroy it and suddenly start dying from dangerous physics.'

"That's good at least, you won't suffer as I am now. I didn't even get the time to experience pain from the difference in physics because the radiation started killing me first!"

He read amusement from her body language, but she said nothing, so he assumed the conversation was over.

Instead, he looked back towards Earth to see what it was like from this point of view, and was surprised to see three planets that looked to be in close proximity to one another

One was Earth, but the other two were unrecognizable. The other he'd seen from Earth was nowhere to be seen, so both of these options were new now.

'I see. That must mean I traveled away from the other planet and now it's out of range of whatever "Vision" I have here. I'd have to go back to Earth to get close to it again."

That meant this strange dimension he'd found himself in was some kind of labyrinth, and each fork in the path would close off the previous options while opening up new ones.

The white void was a godsend, because it appeared completely neutral. His soul didn't struggle to exist at all, so the void was likely compatible with all types of life. He knew the planet he wanted to visit wouldn't be though, and he thought back to one of the clauses in Divine Balance he hadn't been able to test yet.

[Level 300 evolutionary upgrade - Body's balance is granted minor predictive properties, letting you build a resistance to things you theorize you may face]

He still thought it was silly, but it would help him here. Going back through his memories of when he stepped onto the new planet, he filtered out the excruciating pain of burning alive while he decayed, instead focusing on how his soul innately rejected its surroundings.

On Earth, the walls of his soul had felt more than sturdy, it felt unassailable. Completely impossible to breach. No matter how hard he wanted to, there was a boundary at the edge of his soul that ensured nothing intangible would go out or in which, in every case he'd seen thus far, was affinity mana.

The new universe didn't like this, it wanted to tear that barrier down. It wanted to expose him to the world, but it wasn't a malicious force, it was just nature.

'It seems like in THIS universe they can actually expel affinity mana into the air, meaning they probably don't suffer from the overload madness Earth does.'

He thought about this difference, encouraging Divine Balance to work out a solution on this as well and it did exactly as told.

Despite the Skill description saying it would build "Resistance," Divine Balance seemed to conclude that fighting the change would be for naught. Instead, it changed the edge of Dei's soul to better match the laws of this new universe, meaning he wouldn't suffer from physics ripping into him the moment he stepped through the portal.

He thought about what would happen if he adjusted to this universe then returned to Earth. Would he be able to expel affinity mana on Earth if he did?

No, instead he would probably just have the reverse happen. Rather than his soul being pulled outward in all directions like some kind of balloon, he would be compressed as Earth tried to ensure his affinity mana kept its grubby hands to itself, and his soul would be crushed.

He shrugged, watching the process with fascination. Knowledge let him hear his spells working, and he was more than happy to look into them. He hadn't forgotten his idea to combine spell effects using Connection, and he knew it would go much better if he had an idea of what everything was doing, so he sat back and studied the different parts of Divine Balance.

* * *

When he was fully cleansed and better-off, he tried to step through the portal again knowing damn well he would have to leave again immediately, he just wanted more examples for Divine Balance to work with.

The second time only took around ten minutes to cleanse, and the third took five. On the fourth try, his healing started to outpace the damage, and they were finally ready to jump into the new world and begin exploration.

Walking up to the gate one last time, he almost stepped through when something caught his eye, and he paused.

'Is that… smoke?' he thought, looking through the gate, into the physical world, and seeing something white begin seeping out from nowhere.

He flew back and Perumah followed his lead, both cautious as to what dangers there might be in the area after the Cosmic Beast, though they were the ones coming from the void this time.

Seconds passed, and the white gas began to swirl, then spark. White lightning flashed within the cloud, and it expanded gradually. When the smoke touched the edge of his gate, the entire thing destabilized, nearly closing itself, when everything collapsed inward.

The smoke converged into a central point, and exploded with light. Dei heard something shatter, and a figure emerged from the broken space.

Contrary to what he expected though, it did not lunge at them or attack- as a matter of fact, it blurred away from them.

Something appeared from the smoke and just… flew away. It moved faster than even his mind could catch up to, but he was able to gauge the general shape, before its figure sank below the horizon, and it was gone.

It looked humanoid and flailing, but mostly limp. Despite little information to work on, Bestial Communication told him the figure was panicked, which alleviated his foremost worry- that there was a being capable of moving and thinking faster than himself. If that was true, he would've turned right around and left because that was simply not worth the risk.

His mind went to where they were in the world, at the seam of reality, and had a thought. Was that perhaps another Realmwalker, using a different means of travel than him? He assumed this dimension was the only real way to travel to neighboring worlds, but there were realistically endless options.

That would mean their panicked state was perhaps from some kind of accident to their travel, and they might be in a heap of trouble. Based on the speed they traveled though… he wasn't hopeful for them to be alive at their landing.

If they were though, they might need help!

"Want to follow that thing?" he asked Perumah.

"Yes," she responded simply, and they stepped through the gate to perhaps find something interesting.

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