Chương 1: Shattering Ascension

184th Realmbreaker Annum … will not deal with the First Manabreak and all the ensuing details. Rather, this incident report will only contain the scant information known about the originator. Evidence suggests that his body was shattered in the incident and dispersed across the Realms. This would normally constitute a fatal accident. However, in this case, the rift opened via the experiment opened onto a heretofore unknown Realm, one with super-condensed mana the likes of which has never been seen before.

Aside from this mana contributing to the resulting Manabreak, it also managed to preserve the originator's spirit, according to theories by certain investigators. There is little to no evidence of this, however, so a theory is all that it remains. Due to the highly classified nature of the experiment, the Androvian government saw fit to eradicate most hard evidence of the experiment so as not to stain the great image they had acquired over the years after the Realmbreaker…

Excerpt from the Incident Report on the First Manabreak Enforcer Cillian V. When Marionys Ryland opened and travelled through a rift across the universe, he wasn't expecting to be worshipped at his destination. He wasn't sure how else to describe it. There was about two handspans of free space around him. The rest of the area was taken up by kneeling and prostrated figures made of vaguely greyish-purple glassy material.

Every single one had their arms clasped and raised in his direction, their faces etched in pleading supplication. Ah. The dungeon he had rifted to must have coopted the Glyph of Anchor he had left on Realm Zero. It had been a few centuries since he had last been to Vyrd, so it stood to reason that the rift-anchoring Glyph had decayed. Enough for a dungeon to take over the etched symbol of mana for itself. Ryland wasn't too impressed. This dungeon was born from a piece of himself, after all.

A piece he had come to collect. Before the dungeon stopped being a mere dungeon and turned into something several multitudes worse. He should have some time on his hands, though. Ryland didn't believe in rushing things, so he had arrived on Vyrd long before the bit of him that the dungeon was based on should turn volatile. At least, that was what his investigations from a completely different Realm had indicated, and he tended to trust his findings. A slightly exciting thought pilfered through his current thoughts.

Centuries … He hadn't stepped foot on Vyrd—on his original home, the world where everything had started—for ages. If the dungeon's air hadn't been so stuffy and stifling, Ryland would have inhaled long and deep. Breathing wasn't exactly a necessity for him, but he couldn't deny that it was certainly satisfying at times. He had been about to go into a nice little reverie about all his old memories of Vyrd, but a rather rude glowing box interrupted him. [New Entity detected. Now evaluating New Entity…] Ryland read through the brief words on the glowing blue box. When in all the Realms had Vyrd acquired a system? As he expected based on prior experiences, the screen was intangible. His fingers passed right through where it was supposedly positioned in spacetime, with a faint hint of blurring at the points of contact the only indication that he had tried to touch it. It didn't react to his magic either.

Like most other constructs of its nature, the window existed in some strange dimension that was visible but intangible. Ryland knew it shouldn't be entirely untouchable. There was no such thing as an impossibility in the entirety of the cosmos. The only real limiter was just how well one could use the principles of magic and the mana that existed everywhere to bend reality to their whims. Nevertheless, certain acts were absolutely more difficult than others.

Case in point—despite having interacted with such systems before, Ryland couldn't quite pull the metaphorical curtains apart to reveal the integral workings underpinning the glowing blue window. Which should eminently be possible because it had to be an artificial construct. It hadn't been here when he had lived on Vyrd, after all. Further considerations were waylaid when the screen shifted. The words on it morphed, the blue window blinking as it relayed new information. [Evaluating New Entity… Inscribed Glyphs: 1… 3… 8… 19… 241… <ERROR> Spell Glyphs: 1… 12… 91… 387… 6, 300… <ERROR> Soul Glyphs: 1… 6 Ranking experiences… Discovered mana link across multiple Realms… across multiple timelines… <ERROR> Spatiotemporal conflicts discovered… Unable to categorize abilities and experiences of New Entity… Instating base rank… Assigned Rank: Iron [1] Assigned Manasoul Archetype: [???] Archetype Designation: [???]]"Really, now?" Ryland murmured. So, the new system on Vyrd had failed to categorize him properly.

Disappointed though Ryland was, the feeling was minimal. And wholly expected. He couldn't actually recall the last time a framework that translated reality into a numeric list had properly captured the length and breadth of his experiences without tripping over itself. At least it got the number of Soul Glyphs right. That was something. It left him curious about everything else it had stated.

There were numerical assignations called ranks, likely related to the sum total of one's power and capabilities, as well as a manasoul archetype, the latter of which was just indecipherable entirely. As if the system couldn't figure him out at all. Ryland was familiar with manasouls, of course. They were a fundamental part of every living being, the primal core of magic within a creature that allowed it to hold, channel, and interact with mana and thereby cast magic.

But to attempt to assign his manasoul an archetype… well, he could see why this system was struggling. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Considering Ryland wasn't exactly restricting himself to a single body, a great number of which weren't his to begin with… spatiotemporal conflicts were understandable. They possessed their own histories simultaneously alongside his, after all. He raised his hand, fingers briefly causing the bright blue window to blur again.

This thing did exist in some plane of reality. If there was one thing Ryland prided himself on above all others, it was parting the veil of spacetime and reaching anywhere he wished. So, it stood to reason that he could reach wherever this system— Ryland's Glyph of Perception, Inscribed on the back of the hand of his current body, sent a tingling pulse through him. Someone else was present in the dungeon. Right. Messing around with the strange system could wait.

First, he needed to navigate this dungeon and accomplish his goal. And retrieve the piece of himself before someone else caused any unfortunate alterations, accidentally or otherwise. The idea was probably improbable, but certainly not impossible. He had experienced it a few times already in other Realms. There was good reason to suspect that the ones who had tried to steal pieces of him elsewhere could try the same here. But no need to jump to conclusions. Ryland would work with what he verifiably knew.

After all, it was the dungeon that had co-opted his decayed Glyph of Anchoring. Not some other entity brimming with malintent. A small evidence that whoever he had sensed wasn't someone acting against him, especially since the presence wasn't particularly powerful. That said, it was curious this was the first living presence he was sensing inside the dungeon. Well, the first active presence. The dungeon still possessed denizens. They were just… subdued, for some reason. Ryland could guess the reason.

He looked around. Beyond the gathering of glassy statues kneeling and praying to him, he found nothing at all. Just darkness. The soft, diffuse light emerging from the figures only lit up the immediate area around Ryland himself. Beyond that, he saw nothing. No exits. No tunnels leading to other chambers. The dungeon seemed rather intent on keeping him here. He had places to be, however, so his manasoul fired up with a deluge of magical energy and he cast his Glyphs. A surge of mana spun out of Ryland.

The core of his current manasoul was located at the lowest end of his current sternum. Little glints of white and blue light emerged from his body, lending his midnight robes an ephemeral hue. Mana came alive with a soft zing. The glimmering sparks arced off his body to coalesce in front of him. Ryland already had the picture of the Glyph he sought etched in his mind. The Glyph of Anchoring he had left on Vyrd had deteriorated, so his first order of business was restoring it to its peak condition.

His mana condensed and reshaped into the fluid, cursive lines of the targeted arcane symbol. There. Now his Glyph of Anchoring was back in its peak condition. It shone bright enough to shade the whole chamber with daylight, turning the dull purple-grey figures into statues of glimmering crystal. The Glyph's white energy was interspersed with opalescent daubs of colour, the air around it shivering and twisting under the magical duress typical of most Glyphs Ryland could cast. Best to not let it linger too long.

A brief look under the new light confirmed his earlier suspicions. There was indeed no discernible exit. Not that it was about to stop him, of course. Ryland dismissed his Glyph of Anchoring and cast his actual magic.

"Tra—" he intoned but stopped as a realization hit. Incanting was the normal procedure of calling on the arcane energies of the Realms and impressing a sorcerer's will upon them. But there was an extra step now. Well, not a step. Just a slight shift in methodology.

"I wonder…" he murmured, before chanting properly." [Translocate]." Ryland's manasoul came alive with magical furore. The circuits of mana running through his body ignited with a waterfall of the world's magical essence running through every single line, a suppressed storm of power emerging from his fingertips. He let himself enjoy the way his skin and flesh grew warm and tingling, the way his bones seemed to vibrate with power. The air thrumming around his body and enlivened his soul. Magic… was magical.

Who'd have thought. And intense.

More physiologically intense than he remembered it being on Vyrd. He wondered, briefly, if it was in part because of the system. At least it wasn't trying to rewrite the familiar process of magic. It still consisted of Glyphs, their resultant spell circles, and so on. A procedure he was intimately familiar with and preferred above all others. Ryland remembered very well how a different system had tried to replace this process with a runic methodology on Realm 89.

Needless to say, Realm 89's civilizations had subsequently fallen. The way their carcasses had been picked clean by the vultures and hyenas of the Realmbreaker Wars had really, really stopped others from trying to reinvent the natural workings of magic that mana liked to follow. Ryland's power intensified further as his spell came to life. For a brief moment, glowing rings manifested in front of him. The spell circle took shape. He wasn't in any real rush, so he could let it run its course.

His Soul Glyph of Rift formed the spell circle's Centreglyph. Bounded within a pearlescent ring, the Centreglyph reached out to the Subglyphs that surrounded it and formed the rest of the spell circle. One of the Subglyphs was the Glyph of Anchoring he had just repaired. This would lock the rift's destination to Vyrd. There were others besides that. Glyphs that determined things such as the distance of travel, the physical consistency of the location, and the necessity for any sort of warnings.

It had taken a mere blink of Ryland's eye for the full spell circle to come into effect. Like his Glyph of Anchoring, it was bounded with white and iridescent energy. If the air had twisted before, it was now threatening to rupture entirely. Good thing the spell circle broke into the actual spell another blink later. With a crack like lightning fracturing across glass, a rent opened up in front of Ryland. A jagged hole in reality, edged with sharp, golden cracks that bent space and time to his will.

He had tried to place it such that the rift didn't touch the statues kneeling around him. While what happened to the dungeon and everything it contained didn't particularly interest him, many dungeons did end up forming some sort of ecosystem within them, one populated by beasts who only cared about mages if they strayed too close, like all creatures would. The process of retrieving the piece of himself could end up destroying this whole place.

Ryland didn't want to casually ruin the lives of all those creatures, but leaving the piece of himself alone would result in a far worse catastrophe eventually. So, his thoughtfulness might just end up being pointless. Almost hypocritical, from certain perspectives. Yet he remained mindful all the same. Ryland stepped through the dark rift in reality that had cracked open space and time.

"Now," he said, as the rift snapped closed behind him.

"It might just be me, but I wouldn't call that Iron [1] levels of magic." Apparently, the system agreed. [Achievement Recognized: Hierarchy Violation Categorizing caster's spell, [Translocate]… Tier of Centreglyph: [24] You have cast a spell at a Tier far, far beyond what your rank would suggest. Your apparent rank belies your true capabilities. Rank up from Iron [1] through Iron [100] to Silver [1]. Reward: 100 Glyph Prints. Achievement absorbed by Manasoul Archetype [???].] [Achievement Recognized: Shattering Ascension You have climbed 100 ranks faster than anyone in history. Ascension time from Iron [1] to Silver [1]: 7 minutes and 13 seconds. Previous record: 3 hours, 19 minutes, and 44 seconds. Reward: Assigned a notch for a new Soul Glyph.] [WARNING: Anomalous <ERROR> detected Evaluating consequence…] A warning? Now what could that be about… Ryland glowed a little bit, glinting lines of energy seeking to call his body home. It wasn't his doing this time.

Vyrd's system had seen fit to elevate his status, which meant it was trying to instil a sense of power into him that was appropriate for his new rank. Or rather, trying to gift him the potential to learn a new Soul Glyph. Something told him that he probably ought to be impressed by that. Most mages manifested a single Soul Glyph and stuck with it. A rare few manifested a second by working for a lifetime. Legends were known to possess a third, on occasion. And Ryland was casually trotting around with six.

Seven, potentially. Honestly, his smile was less about the accomplishment and more about what it represented practically. Yet another Soul Glyph meant an entire new school of magic opening up to him for in-depth exploration. Who wouldn't feel a small smile of giddiness passing across their lips at the accomplishment? He'd just need to manifest the Soul Glyph at some point. Earn it through his magic and the changes he wrought in the world with it. Hmm. He was also starting to see the relevance of the system in Vyrd.

Back when he had still called this world home, magic had been a lot more intentional and intuitive, requiring careful deliberation and concentrated effort. Now, with this new framework in place, Ryland was starting to see how access to magic had become a lot more… simplified. Only by leaving the dungeon would he be able to see the true effects, however. Which would come after his business here was done. Assuming whatever he was being warned about wouldn't restrict him or something. That would be unsurprising.

But annoying all the same. Ryland noted that he was in a tunnel of the same glassy material as had made up the statues from earlier. The diffuse light was enough to see where he could go, though there was something else about the atmosphere here that was kind of intriguing. He felt like the dungeon was holding its breath, so to speak. Anxiously waiting for something to happen. For the shoe to drop.

The air was still, the bestial denizens remained hidden within their nooks and crannies, the mechanisms of the dungeon all petrified and temporarily defunct. All because he was here? Perhaps. This, like most other things Ryland tended to experience, wasn't a particularly new phenomenon. Although, the rapid sound of steps preceding the arrival of a boy in the middle of the dungeon was certainly on the more novel side. The youth stared at him from behind wide glasses, his eyes even wider behind them.

"Blasted Calamities," he cursed in somewhat odd Androvian.

"What kind of a dungeon monster are you?"