Reaper of the Martial World

Book 6: Chapter 257: Centuries (1)

Dyon stared blankly at the array, clenching his fists. Even for him, at his best estimate, he would need at least half a century before his knowledge base reached the level necessary to manipulate a planet level array, and who knew how much longer than that it would take for his soul to reach the dao levels. Of course, this pace was insanely fast even in comparison to the entire cosmos, but right now, it was painstakingly slow. 

It wasn’t a simple matter of his soul talent, the question was how long it would take for his body to be powerful enough to withstand the power of his soul.

Considering the pace at which his body was improving, even Dyon couldn’t estimate a proper amount of time.

It wasn’t as though Dyon hadn’t thought of this possibly happening. If the Soul Market wanted to steal talents from all 100 universes of its quadrant, it needed the ability to quickly travel between them all. It was just that Dyon hoped that this teleportation pad they used would be at the moon level at best, at least then, even if it was a slim chance, he’d still have one.

But now, it was all ruined.

‘What do I do, what do I do?’

Dyon wasn’t a person who became easily flustered. He had long since been able to stare down his own death without blinking an eye, but somehow fumbling around with the lives of others made his heartbeat quicken. He hadn’t been this agitated in a long time…

‘I have to try.’ Dyon clenched his fists, raising his Perception to the limits and peering into the intricacies of the array.

By the time an array reached the planet level, it had long since left the realm of imitating wills and could actually evoke them on its own. Obviously, the most important will that a teleportation array evokes is spatial will.

That said, there were many other facets including protection, stabilization and optimization.

For a normal individual to withstand teleportation of large distances, an array had to have very few flaws, increasing its protective and stabilizing abilities. But, at the same time, it needs to be simple enough that the amount of energy needed per teleportation is kept to a minimum.

The concept is the same as comparing a genius vs average programmer. An ordinary programmer of computer code might take ten lines of code to program the same function a genius programmer only takes a single line to. Obviously, the latter is far more efficient both for himself and the future use of his code.

When Dyon first learned about arrays, there was a reason he immediately compared them to coding from his world. However, this knowledge was doing him little to no good right now.

It took Dyon 16 years to reach the peak of the comet level. During the monotonous 13 years he spent killing hundreds of thousands of beasts in his third trial, his mind was constantly reflecting upon the [Dao of Array Alchemy]. Still, he was simply too far from the planet level.

His first task should have been to find the location symbols of the array, but the moment he tried to, he realized that planet level arrays were organized very differently than what he was used to.

Every symbol was actually built upon each other like a complex, interconnected puzzle piece. To alter a single portion, one had to have enough knowledge to bypass the other layers without disrupting them.

The worst part was that this array was inextricably linked to 20-30 others, maybe more. This made it even more difficult to change the location symbols than Dyon had previously thought. For context, it was already wildly impressive that Dyon realized even this much.

These arrays were meant to teleport to a very select few locations, this was how it was able to keep its energy use so low. After all, there was no way a 98^th quadrant had the necessary energy stones to power a planet level array.

Dyon’s eyes reddened and involuntarily began to bleed. Analyzing an array far above his abilities was taking too much of a toll on his mental energy. It had been less than a minute, but he was already fatigued beyond belief. historical

“Big Brother!” Little Yin and Yang called out.

The two of them wanted to help, but there was nothing they could do. However, they knew they had to stop Dyon. Him pushing himself like this wouldn’t accomplish anything.

Unwillingly, Dyon turned his gaze away, holding his head in hopes of squeezing away the pain.

Dyon took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He definitely didn’t withstand all of that humiliation just to fail here.

He even had half a mind to start a rampage. If it wasn’t because he was so sure that the fail safes Soul Market had in place would put the lives of the soul slaves in danger, he wouldn’t have done any of this to begin with.

‘Wait… The planet level arrays came from this quadrant’s ancient era, but the fail safes couldn’t have?… right?…’

Dyon shook his head. That was simply wishful thinking. Even if Soul Market didn’t exist back then, that didn’t mean that this quadrant didn’t have a reason to have fail safes for other things. They might very well be just as powerful as these teleportation arrays.

‘Hold on…’ Dyon’s eyes brightened. ‘For other things? That’s it!’

“Little Yin, Little Yang, what’s the history of this array?” Dyon asked expectantly.

“The history?” The twins asked in confusion. They could check the history of any inanimate object, but what was the purpose here?

“Yes, quickly!” Dyon pressed, slightly agitated.

The twins blinked but still did as Dyon said. Their eyes glowed as they scanned the array and its surroundings.