Han Sen looked around, giving the surroundings a good look before departing. After all, he had gotten his revenge, there was no reason left for him to stay. With that, he executed a series of hand seals before summoning a portal and walking through it, forever disappearing.
. . .
The prince unhurriedly approached the Atlas; he moved nonchalantly with his hands in his pockets. He often did these sorts of things as he found them relaxing in the most natural of ways. As usual, his face held a cold and solitary expression, much fitting for royalty, which betrayed his emotions of awe. His reverence was split between two things, the immortal and celestial nature of the Atlas; and the amount of destruction caused by Han Sen. After all, he had single-handedly overwhelmed an entire sect, causing its demise and getting his revenge.
'You have to respect a man who goes above and beyond… I wonder if I should recruit him?'
He admired people like Han Sen who did the unthinkable to achieve their goals and taking him under his faction didn't seem like a bad idea. But all these laid fruitless causing him to shake his head as he thought, 'Though I doubt he would be as loyal as the others, he might even bear some resentment against the kingdom for not stopping the Han clan's massacre…'
'But there was something strange… the Sect Master was fighting like a whole different person. He also didn't seem to show his full martial prowess, even when faced with death… I wonder what had happened… then again, that is none of my concern.'
Shaking his head again, he discarded all thoughts regarding Han Sen and the Sect Master before focusing back on the subject at hand, the Atlas. For a weapon of unknown grade, the Atlas didn't let out any type of energy fluctuation, causing one to think it was no more than an ordinary weapon. But then, one would be wrong!
'Ordinary weapons aren't capable of causing natural phenomenon…', hinting at the holy light that emanated from the sword.
'To pull off such a feat, an artifact has to be at the Sage realm or higher, which begs the question, what realm is this sword currently at? If not Sage, then this sword must really be the gift of the gods… or their curse!'
Sage class weapons were extremely powerful, legendary arms capable of distorting reality with their domain's authority. For example, the holy light that emanated from the Atlas can be described as a domain as it distorts the natural reality in order to achieve its feat.
Their domain wasn't the only thing of note though as they were destructively capable of obliterating entire mountains! Fortunately for the world, Sage class weaponry was extremely rare and could only be created by blacksmiths of the same level. There was also a cultivation restriction made alongside them which restricts their power, only being properly utilized by a Sage realm cultivator; and those were a dime a dozen, only seen as legends belonging to the few strongest of sects globally.
Given what was just said, it was obvious that no one in the Skunder Kingdom could bring out the full potential of the weapon, but who said his aim was to bring out its full potential? No, he only intended to utilize the leftover powers to win the throne of the kingdom, giving him a chance at attaining higher levels of cultivation.
'The further go on the road of cultivation that harder it gets...'
All this, of course, was under the pretense that the sword was of the Sage realm. If it were to be higher, things would get much more complicated; since only naturally occurring artifacts are able to attain a level higher than the Sage realm, if this sword was really above the Sage it would make it a natural treasure and due to the scarcity of weapons of such grade, the monsters that had managed to attain cultivation levels higher than Sage would surly transverse entire galaxies, at the chance of claiming it for themselves.
Thinking of all this, Prince Amon felt that some things couldn't really be helped. If it was indeed a weapon with a realm greater than Sage, then the only sensible thing to do would be to leave it be.
'Those monsters can fight amongst themselves for it… but if they were to fight here, I doubt the world would be able to handle the consequences of their bout. Hmmmm, maybe I should board it on a spaceship and send it to a distant system or something? Better yet, I'll just notify the Olden Empire so that it would be their problem and not mine... Yea, I'll definitely do that.'
The prospect of doing as little as possible for things that didn't really concern him seemed very appealing as he finally decided upon a viable course of action. Realizing he had dozed off for a moment there, Prince Amon shook his head as he refocused back on the sword.
As he got nearer to the sword, he started to feel its warmth. He pondered whether this feeling was similar to what a baby would feel when inside the womb. Getting even closer, the warm feeling intensified, not in a threatening way, but more in a soothing way which induced sleep.
*Yawn*
The prince yawned as the warmth made him feel a little too comfy.
'I should take a good long rest once I'm back at the capital…'
. . .
Finally arriving before the sword, the prince could be seen with a tilted head, courtesy of the floating sword. Prince Amon looked on with slight expectance before slowly floating towards it. Finally coming within his reach, the prince observed the sword with curiosity, inspecting every inch of it with the utmost scrutiny.
The sword was golden all over with strange marks running up and down its body. It was built to resemble a Chinese Jian sword, if not for the blade being five fingers wide, classifying it as a broad sword. The overall build of the sword was quite intriguing but what was more interesting were the markings that decorated its body. Prince Amon looked at them with enthusiasm as he thought,
'These marks, they're older than anything I've seen before…', this spoke volumes coming from one who has studied history as far back as the time before qi was introduced into the world, dubbed the "Mortal Era".
'Maybe this sword was created in the Mortal Era, then was immortalized when celestial energy was introduced into the world…'
Not knowing how to identify its origins, he pulled out an orb-like object from his spatial ring. The orb was cloudy white in color and made of a material that shined like glass. The prince called out to the orb commanding, "Laya, scan the sword for its power output and record all the markings found on its body. Also, matter date it and find out what era it's from, I suspect it's from the Mortal Era, but I can't be sure."
A ring of blue ring of light appeared around the orb as it began floating, after which a blue-grided ray of light showed from the orb onto the sword's body prompting it to say, "Scanning in progress…" A few seconds later, it said, "Scanning complete." Before continuing, "The results of the countless matter dating conducted reports the sword to be far older than the universe itself… That shouldn't be possible…. As for its power output, readings show that the sword is as normal as any other crafted by a mortal. One reason for this may be that this sword operates on power that hasn't been recognized or recorded yet making it an anomaly, contrary to my previous statement."
Prince Amon was shocked by Laya's report, his eyes growing wide at the sudden revelation.
'I-I have to get back to the capital as fast as possible!'
A smile appeared on his face as he summoned a containment cube from his spatial ring. The containment cube was purple in color and transparent in material, with only its edges covered by a grey, steel-like material. Right now, it was only the size of a Rubik's cube but after being commanded by the prince, it slowly got bigger. Reaching the size of a guitar case, and the width of a normal kitchen plate.
One of its faces suddenly disappeared, prompting the containment cube to proceed forward. It slowly encased the sword, its faces doing nothing to stop the light. Once the case had completely encased the sword, the disappeared face of the cube reappeared, initiating a mechanism that made the metallic edges of the cube release a shiny silver liquid from tiny circular pores.
The liquid spread from each side slowly cladding the faces of the cube pitch silver. Even the holy light that emanated from the sword could be seen visibly shrinking and once all the faces were covered entirely, not an ounce of light was left for the world. The surface of the liquid held a unique multicolored luster, commonly found on soap bubbles, making it seem like some kind of alchemical concoction.
The prince carefully stored the containment cube back into his spatial ring, before he placed two fingers under his right ear and ordered for their immediate retrieval. Only a few seconds passed before *Puff*, like smoke, they disappeared into thin air!
_ _ _
In a dimly lit room, the constant clicking of keys stopped as [Author] had finally finished the chapter.
'Fuck yea!! And with enough time left to edit it too!'
He straightened his back before stretching his torso from left to right as a huge smile hung on his face. Finally getting relieved of the tension from his hunched back, [Author] returned to the beginning of the chapter to give it a thorough cleaning. But just as he was about to start editing, the computer screen glitched before turning pitch back.
Confused as to what had happened, he hit the side of the computer screen in hopes that it would fix it, 'Tf happened?'
As if to answer his question, a line of text slowly started appearing letter by letter.
"YOU KNOW THAT WASN'T HOW THE STORY WAS SUPPOSED TO GO."
[Author]'s heart started palpitating uncontrollably as he read the words. "Wtf?! Who are you?!" he asked frightened, but he didn't get a response. Thinking that he had just hallucinated all of this, he shook his head in amusement, still shaken up by what had happened.
"GO BACK AND WRITE IT AGAIN, LIKE HOW YOU HAD ORIGINALLY INTENDED."
'Oh no, this shit is real!!!!!' he thought, as another line appeared.
"DUE TO HAVING VIOLATED THE STORYLINE, THIS HAS BEEN DEEMED AS THE FIRST OFFENCE."
"What tf is this? What offense??? Who is this?! Who are you?'" [Author] shouted as he grabbed hold of the computer screen, clearly scared shitless.
"THREAD CARFULLY."
"GOOD DAY."
[Author] was beyond stunned as read the last two lines of text. 'This is a clear threat… wtf!'
But before he could continue with his antics, the computer screen started playing one of those old TV statics. The noise was uncomfortable but that wasn't the least of his worries right now. [Author] tried his best to stop the screen from continuing but was slowly becoming dazed by the static screen, until finally he stared mindlessly at it.
Once he was like that, the static screen returned to normal and so did [Author].
'What was I doing again?' he thought before he remembered he needed to edit this new chapter before publishing it. Checking the time, he was shocked to see that it had already passed his usual publishing schedule. Prompting him to publish the chapter without editing as he thought, 'I'll just edit it after publishing it… and after that, I'm gonna write that epic fight scene I've been building up towards…'
* * *
[Reader]: What in the absolute fuck is going on?!?!?!?