While Others Cultivate, I Use My Multiverse System

Chapter 167: New Recuring Stone

"You…" The first thing that I noticed as the area around me came to a halt, was the devastated body of that winged figure. With his wings torn away by the sheer force of the blastwave initially created by the reality collapsing back to its natural state, unable to stay midair, the man collapsed to the ground, only for half of his arm to be swallowed by one of the anomalies before I could stop them.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm me." Ignoring the weak sounds of the lethally injured monster, I moved my eyes towards the human officer I made a deal with previously. Or rather, what was left of his body after the reality collapsed right through his flesh. 

No matter how long I wasted on looking around, I could only locate about a third of his body parts, judging them on nothing but the pieces of cloth covering them. Thanks to the guy being an officer, in the direct proximity of my earlier position there were scarcely any other officers, making the task of collecting his remains a far easier one than looking for someone's specific body parts in a literal mountain of flesh.

Not that I was interested in burying those people or monsters either way. 

Taking a look around, I could see that with the disaster now over, both armies rushed all the way back to killing each other with more traditional methods. In fact, only my spot was still safe from the battlefield due to the huge range of the disaster and bloody reaping it ran through anyone outside of my recurring barrier.

"I guess I need to find that holder of the core myself." No matter how much I looked around the place, the head of the officer was nowhere to be found. With the only link that connected me to the current owner of the core, it appeared I only had a brute-force way of obtaining what I needed.

"Y-you…" Speaking up with utmost trouble once again, the formerly winged man sent me a hateful look. Yet outside of hate, there was a strange strand of hope in his eyes.

"Yes, me. What do you want?" Paying due respects to this man's resilience given how nearly half of his body was now gone and he still managed to speak, I could see the light fading away in his eyes.

"No, not like that. You are not free to die yet, now that you piqued my curiosity!"  While I had no idea whether it would work or not, I approached the man before placing my hand on him. With the energy from my consecutive breakthroughs, pumping his veins full of my own magic was the only way to keep him alive for the moment. 

After all, compared to earth, the inhabitants of this world clearly used the magic for a long time to be able to create the hideous monsters they put up at the front of their lines. 

"AAGH!" Once my sweet energy started to flow down the fractured spine of the dying monster, I could see a strange shine entering his pupils. As if he was high on some drugs, the man even attempted to stand up with the help of his single limb remaining, but the lack of legs that he lost in another anomaly made it quite difficult for him. 

"You, you wanted to say something. You was trying so hard, that I decided to keep you alive for long enough so that you can tell what you wanted. Now," Looking down at the suddenly energetic body of the winged man, Sebian couldn't even smile. "Use this opportunity or go and curse me all you wish. I came with an offer of a deal, but you decided it would be better to just kill me on the spot, so it's not like I can find any faults in what I did either." 

Shrugging my eyes, I waited for a moment before releasing a deep sigh and straightening my knees. But just as I was about to leave the man to bleed out to his death properly, his faint voice sounded once again.

"Wait…" After fighting with myself in my thoughts, I ultimately decided to follow this one request. Casting a quick glance at the approaching armies of both sides, keen on filling the gap that appeared in their lines, I sighed once again. 

Before long, I would have to move away, or I would find myself stuck between two great armies once again!

"Wait… The sacred core…" Finally starting to speak some sense, the formerly winged man managed to attract my attention right as I was about to leave. "You cannot get it back to where it should go." 

Cough.

"It will spell the doom to this world. So please…" The man didn't manage to finish his sentence. Even filling the man's veins with my magic only managed to stall the inevitable. With his entire torso ending with a long, circular-cut where his crotch should be, it was a wonder that this particular monster managed to actually hold for so long!

"Well, it seems like I have no other choice but to become a rider of the apocalypse, then." Looking down at the lifeless remains of the tough monster, I felt a shiver moving down my spine. Rising my head a bit, I could see the details on the approaching wave of monsters.

There was no time for me to waste here any longer. 

Still holding to the stones I equipped back before the barrier collapsed, I turned towards the human army, before activating two of the heavy-hitting stones of mine.

One of which was just a simple fireball. Consisting of four layers, it brought the magic in its relatively pure form before condensing and then igniting the air at the set distance. Activating it, instantly turned a long line of empty air into a suddenly appearing sea of flames, scorching a good amount of human soldiers before they could reach my position.

But it was the other stone that actually managed to achieve the results I sought for.

It wasn't a recurring stone in a full sense of it. Heeding my advice, Sander put a serious stop to this branch of the stone development, wary of my warnings. Thus, instead of using an entire thing to constantly empower itself to the point of shattering the limits set by the universe itself, this new stone of mine actually only had a single recurring path. 

Without the proper fueling stone, it could hardly be activated. Only by inserting a huge chunk of my own energy into the stone first, I was capable of activating it. In fact, if not for my recent rise in cultivation, procuring such a huge amount of energy capable of kickstarting this stone would require me to use yet another stone before dabbling in the energy of the phenomena it would invoke. 

But now, I managed to activate the stone just like that. And as expected, nothing happened at first. 

Right as the armies closed in once again, the recurring stone within the small construction finally managed to reach its limit. And only once its own energy started to diffuse into the air once its structure failed to hold the exponentially growing mana, the rest of the detailed construction came to life.

At first, the first layer. According to Sander's own words, it was mostly responsible for shaping the wild magic into the proper form, allowing for its further modelling. Only once the mana would actually pass through the second layer of the stone, any phenomena would start appearing. 

In this particular stone, Sebian openly claimed not to dare using the more complicated schematics from the stone carving manual from Ayda's world. As such, rather than making the magic do several things at once, the grand spell could only stack its effects one on one. 

The air filled with the dense fog of mana. Then, the energy within the stone coursed through the third layer, turning the mana in the air into fuel for the fire that followed as soon as the fourth layer of the stone activated. 

But the entire might of this peculiar item came to be when its last, fifth layer filled with magic energy. This layer was the only one that used the stacked schematics idea, turning all the leftover magic in the air into a powerful current that instantly spun the masses of air into a circular motion, inviting a fresh supply of oxygen to a huge area covered by the fires from this damned stone!

Once fully activated, the effects of the stones started merging. There was no longer any mana in the air, preventing anyone inside another disaster from using it to fend off the attack. The fire continued to burn through the fresh servings of its fuel from the stone, scorching anyone who was unlucky enough to appear in its path.

And lastly, the fire tornado that turned the scene even more chaotic, moved exactly according to where I wished to send it!

Stuck between two armies, I didn't really need to think about the destination of the fiery whirlpool of air and flames. Once a huge chunk of the human army turned into ash, stopping the human soldiers from doing me any harm, I turned around before sending the burning hurricane right in the many faces of the approaching mutants. 

Just in time. 

Once the wave of fire reached this hideous opponent of mine, I was almost forced to use a barrier stone to fend off the incoming attacks. Thankfully, the brutal and unforgiving help of the fire appeared right on time, allowing me to save this precious stone from going to waste on the battlefield. 

And then, there were hardly any monsters capable of even reaching me, leaving my thoughts alone to deal with my current problem.

"Just how the heck am I supposed to find the prince now?!"