A few hours before Varian and Maria were targetted:
25th floor, Duchy Of Esevr
"T-This floor is weird!" Varian ducked down as a fast moving debris shot at an unimaginable speed just above his head and crashed onto the moon of another asteroid, exploding it into pieces.
"Shut up, I can see," Maria adjusted her balance on the asteroid and calmed down the nausea rising due to the sudden shift in gravity.
Varian didn't care about her reaction and looked around with sparkling curiosity.
They were on an asteriod in a star system with six planets, all bright and bustling with life.
The space was rich with aura. Far richer than the solar system. The reason for this might be the difference in the spatial structure of this space, which was directly pulling a lot of aura from the inner space.
And the space was cold. Bone-chilling, teeth-chattering, and soul freezing cold.
Varian was trying to bear the cold using his powers but in the end, he rubbed his hands and shivered.
Watching the asteroid approach the star, he stretched out his arms in a childish gesture, in hopes to get some warmth.
But a thought flashed in his mind and his body stiffened. "Oh wait,"
The asteroid was heading towards the star!
"We need to get off!" Varian shouted and pressed his legs against the asteroid rocks to take a leap.
But before he could make it, the star flared! A wave of aura-infused radiation struck Varian in a blink and a strong dizziness struck him.
Like a puppet, he collapsed on the asteroid and watched it approach the star. As it did, the coldness actually started to rise. Varian's muscles began to stiffen and he felt his bloodflow slow down.
It was obvious that this star was kinda fucked up. Instead of giving away heat, it's taking it away!
This should never happen anywhere. But in this tower where the cosmic laws were tampered with, the impossible was made possible.
"Fuck," Varian wriggled on the ground as he tried to get back onto his feet.
His advancement to rank 3 in Mystic, Famine and Spirit only managed to keep him in a struggling position. But if he had to escape this place, he had to do something else.
Varian tried to teleport but the spatial curvature here was bent by the star. Even if it's a strong star with lots of aura, it could at best make teleportation harder.
But this one was much weirder. It was acting like a blackhole, warping all space around it. He could still try to teleport. But there's at least a 30% chance he'd end up teleporting into the star than away from it.
"M, Mfff!" Maria crawled on the ground, struggling against the thin layers of ice forming over her skin. She took out a glowing orange orb and planted it on the asteroid.
The coldness slowly decreased.
Maria's pale face turned slightly better and she collapsed on her back, panting heavily and staring at the endless dark space.
With a shivering hand, she took out an intricate disk carved with an ancient runic language.
The disk was a miniature version of the gate that took them to the next floor. They each got one when they passed the fifteenth floor.
It's in the rules that appeared when he entered the first floor.
[7) You can forfeit at 15th and 29th floors and return to the safe zone.]
These discs could be used to forfeit and return to the safe zone. Floor 0.
The forfeit disc could only be used by its original owner and only during that particular run. And of course, they must not be in combat or even in a hostile confrontation.
Maria looked at the host star with a regretful expression and urged, "Our bad luck that we were teleported to this asteroid and into this star system."
Varian agreed.
Whenever you hop into the next-floor gate, you're teleported randomly. But there were some places that guaranteed a near-certain death.
It's very rare, though. If you pass through the same floor a 100,000 times, you might get teleported into those deadly locations once.
But they were exceptionally unlucky.
"Let's return and try climbing again." Maria clenched the disc a little tighter and said, though her frowning brows made it clear she didn't like being forced to make that choice.
Varian almost agreed with her but stopped at the last moment. He wanted to try tackle this problem. Sure, he wasn't a rank 5 to bruteforce but his uniqueness was something not even a rank 9 had.
"I'll try fixing this. If I can't, then we'll leave." He closed his eyes and focused, not caring how she responded.
Maria was pissed, of course. But she couldn't do much.
That said, Varian wasn't trusting her. He wouldn't have closed his eyes in front of an eye and focused on something else if not for the specific circumstance.
For all the floors they passed through, they're both on guard against each other, and rightfully so.
But here, if Maria did anything funny, Varian just had to survive the first strike and drag the battle. Then, since she'd fall into a combat state, Maria would no longer be able to use the forfeit disc.
That meant she'd be exposed to the star's suction at a close range. That'd render her immobile and helpless.
Even if she killed Varian by then, she wouldn't even be able to activate the forfeit disc and would fall into the star to die a chilling death.
Of course, there's a small chance she could kill Varian and still escape. Maria was certainly not someone who took such risks.
'Because of the nuclear fusions, the star gives off energy. But the reverse is happening here. And aura is sucking away energy to help the star. This is ridiculous enough to make any physics professor would bang their head.'
In all stars, hydrogen fuses into helium. But the reverse was happening.
The thing that made this work was the twisted natural law Varian could feel only vaguely thanks to the sliver: "A nuclear fission can happen by sucking away the energy from the surroundings."
Varian began to feel the flow of energy from his body to the star. And he also felt the atoms undergoing nuclear fission in the star.
He tried to stop the flow of energy. But in doing so, he was going against the very order that made the change possible on this floor. The resistance he encountered was ridiculously high and he had to give up on direct confrontation.
[Matter (Water) Rank 2: 249/250
Energy (Lightning) Rank 2: 249/250]
Varian decided to work the order for him than against him.
So, he used the matter power to pull the specific atoms undergoing fission and formed an invisible gas blanket around him. These atoms began to break down and suck away the energy from him.
Then, Varian formed a no-transmission barrier around the gas blanket. This ensured that any energy sucked away from him didn't go past the barrier.
It was still hard but since he wasn't preventing his energy going to a nuclear fission—the natural order of the floor—it worked.
He was still losing energy but now, he was giving it to the atoms in the gas blanket around him than to the star.
'The next step…'
Varian used his matter power to manipulate the atoms around him to undergo the nuclear fusion—the natural step.
Of course, he couldn't provide the right conditions for the fusion—one of which was abnormally high temperature. But his matter powers helped.
As a result, an interesting cycle formed around Varian.
His energy was sucked into the gas blanket consisting of Helium atoms. They used that energy and broke down into atoms of Hydrogen. Then, the Hydrogen atoms fused into Helim and as a result, released energy.
A cycle of energy absorption and release formed simultaneously. The two cycles fed each other.
Of course, the efficiency wasn't a 100%. Varian was still losing some energy every second, but the discomfort was nothing compared to the danger he faced earlier.
After this unexpected operation, Varian felt two bottlenecks break.
[Matter Rank 3: 0/500
Energy Rank 3: 0/500]
Only Space and Time were still in rank 2.
'Not for long.'
Varian had a feeling he could be an authentic rank 3 in all seven paths soon.
All he needed was an opportunity.
"Hey, wait, why aren't you shivering like—A-Aach!" Maria sneezed and hugged her knees tighter.
"I forgot about you," Varian said with an honest expression and took out a ring—a ceremonial ring that couldn't even be useful to a level 3 awakener and tapped it.
Maria watched with dumbfounded eyes as the 'ring' gave off a mix of auras and suddenly, the cold stopped.
"Huh?"
Varian jumped off the asteroid and flew toward the planet.
"W-Wait for me!" Maria followed.
