Ch.4 - World Lord

Dalin took in a breath and called out "Sarah!".

That was the girl's name.

His voice echoed throughout the cave, but he received no response.

He kept walking, and in the end, he found a colossal gate at the end of the path.

There was writing in a language he couldn't read on it, furthermore, divine beasts such as divine phoenixes, divine dragons, divine wyverns, divine qilin's divine griffins, and so on were engraved on the gate.

Dalin frowned.

'What is this?' He couldn't help but ask himself.

Suddenly The Empyrean flame manifested itself outside of Dalin's body and the gate lit up before the doors trembled and creaked open just enough for one to walk through, behind them was an endless expanse of white light.

Dalin was stunned and covered his eyes for a moment allowing them to adjust, then he walked through.

When he did so he felt extreme pain as space twisted itself and he saw his surroundings change.

When it finally stopped he opened his eyes again and was shocked.

Paradise! That's all he could describe this place as!

All kinds of auspicious divine beasts flew through the sky, walked on the ground, and swam through the waters.

Furthermore, some even took on human form.

Puffy clouds and warm light could be seen in the sky, furthermore, there were many floating islands in the sky with waterfalls pouring down from them. It was a very mystical sight!

Suddenly a phoenix cry was heard and a phoenix made of flames seemingly made of stardust appeared in the sky and dived down landing on the ground in front of Dalin.

A dragon with stardust scales followed suit roaring into the sky and landing, while a crow with feathers made of stardust also appeared, a wyvern with stardust scales, and so on. Many beasts seemingly made from the universe itself appeared!

They all landed around Dalin forming a circle.

They all changed to human form and bowed with their waists respectfully.

"Greetings, Flame Empyrean!"

Dalin was stunned. However, since they knew who he was he snapped out quickly.

"What is this place?"

"Yin Yang Empyrean Heaven." One of the women, the phoenix responded.

Dalin nodded he looked at the phoenix and honestly, he was attracted by her human form. Her figure was simply too hot, but he ignored it.

"Yin Yang Empyrean Heaven is actually a treasure with its own will, the fact it let you enter means it acknowledges you."

Dalin nodded, not finding that too surprising, he was beginning to become numb to the surprises of the Empyrean world.

"Did a girl come through here? 16 years old, about 150 centimeters tall, blonde waist-length hair tied into a long ponytail by a gold, violet, and white ribbon?"

The dragon spoke this time, he had a burly figure and was wearing no shoes and only wearing some lightweight shorts revealing his well-toned upper body, "Yea, Sarah right?"

Dalin nodded "Her family is looking for her."

The dragon nodded "She comes here to play with the younglings every now and then, but usually only for a couple of hours. However today she's been staying the entire day, something about her not coming back for a while."

Dalin nodded "Alright, I guess I can wait a couple more hours before taking her back."

Everyone here nodded hearing that, the younglings here enjoyed playing with Sarah a lot, so those extra 2 hours meant a lot to them.

"Please, come with me." The phoenix asked respectfully and Dalin nodded.

She grabbed his hand and flew into the sky with celestial phoenix wings on her back, landing on one of the floating islands where a 12-story pagoda resided with various artistic phoenix designs.

She brought him to the living room on the first floor where she served him some tea.

Dalin was surprised by how delicious the tea was.

"Amazing, thank you for the tea." Dalin said and she nodded with a gentle smile.

She just sat on the couch opposite him and watched as he finished the tea.

"So, what do you want, ms…"

"Call me Celestia." She responded.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Celestia?" Dalin asked, he could see something was on her mind.

She hesitated for a moment.

"Forget it… Please just enjoy the tea, the maid will be here to give you as many refills as you want."

Dalin nodded. He decided to get started practicing profound runes, although it might take some time to get success, he was willing to take that time.

He channeled his energy into his finger and began writing in the air. Unlike Lin who could write entire profound runes at once, Dalin had to start by writing what profound runes are made of, spiritual runes. On their own, spiritual runes do little to nothing, but when combined into a profound rune, they can do many things.

For example, they can be used to combine the fire elemental energy in the air and create a fireball, in fact, this is was many mortals with a decent amount of money uses instead of wood. They hire a runemaster to put in an extremely simple self-sustaining fire profound rune in their fireplaces.

The same principle can also be used with frost energy to cool down a room or home though, in order to regulate it, it's a little more complex.

Those are just some extremely simple uses with profound runes. Profound runes can also be used to defend, attack, etc. Overall there's all kinds of profound runes, however despite their uses, on their own, they have their limits. That's where arrays come into play, they can combine as little as 2, up to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of profound runes to perform the same task.

In other words imagine profound runes as computers, if one computer can't handle what you're trying to do, you have 3 choices. You can optimize your program, upgrade the computer itself, or, link more computers up to it and have them split the computational load evenly. The third option is what arrays do, as for the 2nd option that can be done by using higher-tier runes. The higher the tier a profound rune is the more spiritual runes its comprised of.

The 1st option can be done by gaining an in-depth understanding of spiritual runes, what they do, and how they work, in this way you can create your own profound runes which perform the same task but more efficiently.

However, even arrays have their own limits, so what then? Well, you have the same 3 options, refine the profound runes the arrays are made from to do the task more efficiently, use higher tier runes to make a higher tier array, or… You can create a formation! Formations are essentially a combination of arrays to do the same or multiple tasks. Formations consist of 2 or more arrays linked together.

Clearing his thoughts Dalin shook his head.

Dalin didn't have the time to study spiritual runes so the most he could do was learn to imitate profound runes at the moment.

Dalin wrote 3 small runes in the air, these runes lit up dimly and fused together into an ember rune, the simplest fire-type profound rune one can make. Dalin was stunned 'Shouldn't it be harder?'. He shook his head and activated the ember rune. It didn't even create an ember, it only heated up the air around it a bit.

Dalin clicked his tongue 'I knew it was too good to be true.'

The maid noticed he was practicing runes and smiled.

'It was his first try, yet it still managed to at least have an effect, interesting.' She thought.

Dalin was about to try again when the maid cleared her throat "Empyrean Dalin, sir. Perhaps you should use a rune brush and spiritual paper? They are used to practice runes without using as much energy."

Dalin thought for a moment and nodded.

"I'd appreciate it if you could get me a stack of such paper and one of those brushes, I'd also appreciate a refill on my tea."

She nodded bowing respectfully, she took his glass that was on a ceramic plate and put it on a rolling cart which she rolled out of the sliding door and came back a moment later with it refilled, also on the cart was a large stack of spiritual paper, 3 rune brushes with varying brush sizes, and spiritual ink.

She stopped the cart next to the table and carefully grabbed his cup of tea placing it on the table along with everything else. She also brought with her the tea pitcher so she could actively refill him, she noticed he seems to drink pretty fast so she thought it necessary.

Dalin thanked her sincerely and took a sip of the tea before getting back to work.

After she instructed him how to use the rune brushes he began using the smallest brush and began practicing on the paper. After he was done the 3 runes he drew lit up and fused into the ember rune on his paper.

The ember rune is a tier 0 profound rune, tier 0 profound runes use less than 5 spiritual runes and are mainly used for practicing and getting familiar with spiritual runes for rune mastery. There is a total of 100 tier 0 spiritual runes which can be used to make hundreds of tier 0 profound runes.

However, in the hands of someone sufficiently strong, even a tier 0 rune can be used to do devastating damage to an opponent. Why? Because the quality of the energy that the rune is made out of can also enhance its power. This is why rune masters are so highly feared and respected. Especially tier 3 rune masters and beyond. Especially the younger rune masters who become tier 3 rune masters before reaching the gold rank. Because it means that the density of their energy is already comparable to a gold rank or beyond before even entering the gold rank.

In the end, Dalin's 2nd attempt failed, though this time it did make the air hotter.

So he tried a 3rd time, this time his rune managed to make a spark, but that was it.

The 4th time he managed to create an actual ember that hovered above the paper but it burned out after 3 seconds.

The 5th time the ember was stable and would occasionally become a candle flame for a second or 2.

The 6th time the candle flame would flicker into existence for longer, about 3-6 seconds, before fading out of existence.

By the 9th time, it was actually able to stay as a candle flame consistently and even become a small ball of fire for a bit.

He could now consistently make the ember rune make candle flames showing the fact he had lesser mastery over the profound rune itself. Consistently making a stable ember was the sign of inferior mastery over the rune. Runes were split into grades of effectiveness, inferior runes, lesser runes, greater runes, and true runes.

Dalin's goal was to consistently be able to make a true ember rune, signifying his true mastery over the ember rune. Once he did that he would move onto other tier 0 runes and meet the same goal.

Only then would he begin working on tier 1 runes.

Dalin continued comprehending and practicing runes. Meanwhile, the Empyrean Flame was actually assisting him by enhancing his mindset to be more prone to insights, enlightenment, etc.

In the end, 6 hours passed by unknowingly, during which he truly mastered 3 tier 0 profound runes!

Such speed shocked the maid who watched.

Meanwhile, Dalin was brought out of his state of focus when he heard a knock on the door.

"Come in." Dalin said.

The phoenix which Dalin learned from the maid is the Phoenix Empress slid the door open and walked in, a graceful cute girl of about 16 years of age following her.

Dalin smiled "Sarah?" He asked.

The girl was stunned. "Who are you?"

"The Hidden Palace sent me to come to fetch you. My name is Yin Dalin."

"H-How did you get to this place?" She asked.

Dalin chuckled "Did you think you're the only one who can get the acknowledgment of Yin Yang Empyrean Heaven's will?"

He showed her the back of his right palm and there was a 9-pointed star with golden smaller 6-pointed stars at each end. One half is golden the other half is Violet. This is what Dalin thought was the crest of acknowledgment of the Yin Yang Empyrean Heaven's will.

Everyone in the room's jaws dropped because this isn't the crest of acknowledgment, this was its crest of ownership! That meant that the Yin Yang Empyrean Heaven had submitted to Dalin!

He could store its gate in his spirit to summon at any time! Furthermore, he could also call upon all of its energy to temporarily enhance himself with no side effects besides temporary exhaustion!

It could be said… He now owned an entire world!

Dalin noticed their surprised expressions. "What's wrong?"

A moment later everyone including the 16-year-old in the room kneeled. The phoenix empress spoke a moment later, surprising Dalin.

"Lord, the heavens have spoken, you now own this world… Please allow us to be your subjects."