Five massive runes made of pure mana floated above the kingdom of mana, each rune intricately overlapping each other, growing in size rapidly.

It grew and grew until it quickly covered the south side of the primary continent, and a series of more complex runes formed, overlapping the previous five.

Merging to form a complex system of runes, reality wobbled as the system of runes sank it to it, disappearing after a brief flash of light.

__________________

What King Farrimond just saw shocked him. He never saw reality manipulation on such a large scale in his three hundred years of life. To him, those were beyond god-like powers.

He thought the continent splitter would merely split the continent into two halves, not split the very fabric that made reality and fold it around them.

There was such a powerful weapon in his kingdom all along? It made him wonder who the founder of the Mana kingdom was.

Why was it even there to begin with? All these questions plagued his mind, having no answer to these questions made him more annoyed.

He had searched the entire royal archives and public libraries to at least find a clue, but his search gave him nothing, no hints, no answers, just nothing.

How could someone who found the very kingdom he ruled right now just vanish like that?

This left him even more puzzled and with more questions.

Farrimond suspected it was all a plan, and he was nothing more than a chest piece in a game played by gods and god-like beings, but that didn’t bother him.

He was going to become his god One day, he could feel it, he could feel his concepts merging into a domain. This was the last step as he already had mana’s blessing.

He knew his family always had the continent splitter, but never used it, now that he saw what it was capable of.

He was sure it had more functions hidden within it.

He didn’t have time to think about such things now. But he would come back if he survived the impending doom.

Farrimond took one last look at the strange pedestal. It shone blood red.

It had given him time, and he would not waste a single second of it.

Farrimond was going to use this time to push past his limits and gain new strength to protect his people, loved ones, and friends. That was his job, after all.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think whatever was coming was the same as all the other otherworldly entities he fought before and slaughtered.

Luck had played a huge role in him winning, but in the last few years, his luck was getting worse.

Something about this one just didn’t feel right. All the monsters or world-ending entities he had fought came from the void beyond the sky or the deaths of the world, but this one just appeared without warning.

Farrimond waved his hand and appeared in the Royal family’s training room.

______________

High priest Ardor trained and meditated on his concepts, hoping to gain a deeper understanding of his fundamental concept of manipulation, desperately searching for anything that could give him or the kingdom an edge in the upcoming fight.

He prayed daily to the god of mana, but it or they didn’t respond, they never did, no matter how much he showed his gratitude to his so-called “Maker” In a moment of realization, he realized the gods didn’t care if he perished or not, to them, he might as well did not have existed. An ant begging to be noticed is still an ant, just unusual.

He was a fool, a puppet dancing for the gods’ entertainment.

Ardor felt like someone had punched him in the face. He felt weak; the truth had sapped all his strength. He slumped to the ground, chuckling at his stupidity.

Mana buzzed around him, but he didn’t notice it buzzed again, this time louder than before.

He opened his eyes. The world looked and felt different.

Tiny golden strings connected everything, even the laws that made up the world itself. Ardor knew he could connect to and use these strings as he pleased.

“I-I broke though!.” he said, sounding very elated.

He sent a string of his mana to connect to the strings on his chair. When it connected; it felt like his lost hand had come back to him. He moved a single string out of place just slightly and the chair shattered.

He finally got the edge he was looking for. He rushed towards the throne room, eager to tell the king the good news.

________________________

Billions of soldiers marched outside the walls of the Kingdom of mana. They marched towards a massive crack in reality that led to the northern side of the primary continent.

____________________________

[Error…… Unable to expand any further path obstructed by&&%&%57%&%…..Error unable to collect data]

Black frowned as he stared at the system message.

Everything was going so smoothly and now this. He hadn’t expected the kingdom of mana to stop his system, they even stopped its inspection method. He was getting so arrogant he didn’t even consider the possibility of his system being stopped.

He was glad he got reminded that he wasn’t absolute yet and could still face setbacks.

He wasn’t a god; he was a Demi-god. The gods of this universe Weren’t absolute either, just strong dudes stronger than with inflated egos running around.

While he could try brute force, that would only damage the system and cause more bugs to appear. That would be a pain to fix. While he was all-powerful in his domain, it took and could just snap his fingers and fix the system again. It wasn’t cheap; it took almost all of his soul essence to maintain his all-powerful state and he still wasn’t harvesting enough potential to convert it into soul essence faster than fast enough.

“Sigh, being a system is so hard. I think it’s about time I hire some system administrators. “