Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 536 - 502 Abstraction

Chapter 536: 502 Abstraction

The cartographer’s appearance has become vastly different from humans, and simultaneously, his body hidden beneath the cloak and garments is writhing and twisting, as if undergoing further distortion and mutation.

It’s the first time I’ve witnessed a doomsday survivor transforming into a sin demon.

This mutation is unlike the demon-like goat-headed humanoid monstrosities I’ve encountered before. Although sin demons were the archetype for those monsters, Mazao mentioned long ago that the sin demons in the Doomsday Era are entirely different in appearance from those in the modern world.

As the soul and body mutation deepens, the cartographer may also be rapidly losing the ability to speak like a human. He glanced at me silently, then pointed at me with his finger.

Whether in the spiritual sense or physical, he seems to have become the master of all directions. The rapidly spiraling mass of building debris overhead was redirected by him, crashing down toward me like a tilted waterfall.

Such an unreserved attack makes me wonder if he considered not only me and Tan Xiang, but also the two children he wants to "save" at that moment. And I no longer maintain my passive act, raising my hand to point at him as well.

A fireball rapidly coalesced, turning into a projectile that struck the location where the cartographer stood. The ruins of the safe house and the surrounding structures were instantly engulfed by a magnificent fire sea. The high temperature, explosion, and impact swept away the massive debris waterfall that was falling toward me with ease. The cartographer’s power is several dimensions apart from mine; this outcome is only natural.

Tan Xiang, fallen to the ground, uttered a panicked sound, probably thinking he would be killed by this great explosion. However, I’ve already whitelisted him in my flames. Eyes closed, mouth agape, he shouted for a while before realizing he wasn’t injured, and his voice gradually weakened, then he opened his eyes blankly.

"I... didn’t die?" he said, shocked.

Then he looked around at the flames blazing and the explosion aftermath, looked at me again, even more shocked, "Weren’t you poisoned? Did you cause this explosion? You’re so strong!?"

Even though he wasn’t someone I’m familiar with, seeing him show this attitude toward my performance inevitably gave me a sense of achievement of "showing off in front of others."

However, the matter isn’t over yet.

The cartographer vanished in the explosion, but he wasn’t truly dead.

The surrounding ground suddenly began to tremble, and Tan Xiang reacted with panic again.

This couldn’t have happened originally. Even if sin demonization reached achieved level, not reaching Great Success Rank characters surviving my strike is as incomprehensible as stepping on ants yet failing to kill them.

Is it possible he just happened to hide in the crevice of my shoe tread? It’s not so. I understand how he survived; it involves changes in fate and the Cause and Effect Domain.

In the modern world, when I, as Impermanence, exert power, it’s always accompanied by various extraordinary phenomena. When I aim to attack someone, their fate automatically warps into a form that cannot escape my will, the "result" of "hit" emerges first, and the "cause" is supplemented thereafter. Besides this, many inexplicable phenomena occur, which I won’t explain piece by piece here.

This can be said to be a "the right moment, all things unify in effort" forcibly attained by power. However, in the Doomsday Era, due to the chaotic state of fate and cause and effect, these convenient effects no longer exist. My strike was simply an exceptionally powerful blow, without any environmental special enhancement.

But the cartographer differs, as most of his soul is sin demonized, no longer human, but a kind of "doomsday anomaly."

Sin demons are peculiar entities exclusive to the Doomsday Era, viewed as those adapted to the evolved space-time environment of doomsday. What I perceive as a chaotic space-time environment might act as his natural habitat.

At the moment of my attack, this anomaly didn’t escape towards any direction in the real world, but instead fled towards a metaphysical domain. Much like a three-dimensional human suddenly fleeing to two dimensions or an escape to an abstract world constructed by texts and symbols.

The cartographer had once introduced his prowess, saying the "guiding directions" power could help him find a path to survival in dangerous moments. But even so, forcibly finding a path to an abstract world, allowing oneself to enter it through physical movement is simply fantastical. No matter how special and superior his ability is, it should only be doable after reaching the Great Success Rank.

But what he’s done doesn’t stop at that. In feng shui theory, direction—or position—may affect a person’s luck. Choosing the correct direction enables one to be utterly satisfied and achieve an invincible fate. During his escape, he bizarrely exhibited phenomena near resembling "the right moment, all things unify in effort", further intensifying the effect of his action.

This also seems to attest that some remnants of spatial and temporal order from the Doomsday Era still persist.

Without achieving this level, he surely couldn’t evade my strike earlier. Now he’s no longer human, naturally unbound by the framework of human cognition, and can even respond to my high-speed attack without being constrained by the concept of reaction time. Just as Yinyue as an anomaly can perform transformations of equal intensity that humans cannot comprehend, mana is used by the more abnormal the user’s mind is, the broader its scope.

A fierce wind kicked up once more.

The buildings lining our pedestrian street shattered out of nowhere, eyes watching the countless debris gather in the sky.

Tan Xiang stared at the scene, agape.

Even though he’s become a sin demon, the cartographer himself can’t output mana enough to manipulate such quantities of building debris. I assume this pedestrian street is his stronghold, where he carried out substantial preparation beforehand, distributing his power throughout various spots on the street. Now, these forces meant for dealing with doomsday anomalies have all turned against humans.

Combining my experience with the abstract domain and current perception, I can roughly deduce the cartographer’s present state—he’s no longer an "entity" but transformed into a "possibility," dispersed probabilistically in mathematical form amidst this pedestrian street’s ruins.

He exists in every place and yet nowhere.

He can intervene wilfully the physical world through his mana and "guiding directions" superpower, while characters of the physical world cannot directly touch him. Even I, while deciphering and adapting to the Doomsday Era’s space-time, find it difficult to directly contact abstract realm beings.

But, this petty trick alone cannot be his reason for surviving my next strike.

I raised my hand toward the air ahead.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.