Chapter 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 unexpected. 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.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

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.