He could’ve upgraded Basic Aura Manipulation to something better instead of turning Fractured Mind to Unraveled Mind, which would’ve made this next part way easier. But there was something nice about having most of his options limited while challenged by a friend who was showing her own extraordinary talent and expertise.

Zarian cycled his breath. He focused his cultivation technique on his aura instead of his Overwhelming Darkness. The feeling was weird because he already had fine control of his aura, but now he was looping it around even faster and harder than ever before.

Aura existed inside and outside of him. The same was for everyone else he’d met so far.

The aura on the outside focused more on affecting the outside world and gathering more aura in a process similar to osmosis. The aura on the inside focused more on empowering various abilities linked to the System while heavily connected to his culmination of stats.

However, no single point of aura was necessarily tied down to a specific task. True aura manipulation could theoretically move every portion of aura inside and outside of the manipulator.

If Zarian wanted to use more aura outside of himself, then he simply needed to redistribute some of his aura from inside to outside.

As Zarian concentrated and cultivated, he depowered the abilities and skills inside of him that weren’t necessary. He pushed more of his aura from inside to outside.

Because of his Dark Affinity, his aura was naturally dark. But if he honed his focus even more, he could split his aura into two types, dark aura and pure aura.

The splitting wasn’t hard.

Maintaining the pure aura without it being consumed by the majority, his dark aura, was hard.

This was necessary because lights, reflections, and very translucent walls filled the trapped hallway. The invisible maze worked against him, leaving barely any shadow to be found.

While Zarian was overpowered in many ways, especially now that he could withstand being out in the sun, he was still a dark type, and the Infinita Star System had a subtle but heavily ingrained rule set that reminded him of Pokemon types. This hallway was an antithesis to him, which was becoming an interesting theme on the white path.

Hannah must’ve known he would choose this path. She had spent some time preparing for this, just to see if she could stump him.

Zarian relished the challenge she was posing as he slowly moved his arms in circular patterns. By using motion, with his eyes still closed, he had an easier time rotating his dark aura out of his way.

He cycled the pure aura in front of him. He kept adding more to the pure aura by splitting it away from his heavy supply of dark aura.

He used cultivation for the splitting and maintenance process, which differed vastly from the usual case. But he was glad he’d read a bunch of volumes on variant cultivation techniques for this moment.

Applied knowledge was the key to power. But having the knowledge was foundational for a reason.

Finally, when he had enough pure aura, he sent out rippling pulses that spread everywhere with a mental shove. It was like he was a bat using echolocation.

Before the pure aura stopped belonging to him and absorbed into the environment, he could easily sense where his aura pulses went. He noted which section of his aura pulses went the furthest, while other sections slowed down just a little.

Glacial Air Stone was elusive to the senses and difficult to discover through most aura controlling abilities. It was, however, not one hundred percent perfect, only ninety-nine percent per what the had empress said.

If it was perfect, then it would’ve taken a divine act to manipulate such a material into these hard-to-sense walls. Instead, a brilliant and legendary Runic Engineer had sourced, mined, and crafted walls out of the material with near perfect results.

The Madness Wizard found a way through anyway.

Zarian followed the path where his pure aura pulses went the furthest. He moved slowly and deliberately, balancing two types of auras through a splitting-style cultivation technique.

Once he had a rhythm going, he kept shooting out rippling pulses of pure aura as easily as he was breathing. He was honestly having fun even while limited to one trick. He was also vulnerable since he had to underpower many of his abilities that weren’t necessary.

Hannah could have royally crushed him if she sprung an aggressive trap at that moment. Instead, she held back, which was rather kind of her, until his combination of supernatural and aura senses noticed the environment shifting again.

Zarian moved faster to slip past a closing wall. He made it through by the skin of his teeth.

He kept his forward progress without getting heavily obstructed. The journey through the glacial air maze took hours, but he eventually made it on the other side.

With a sigh, Zarian slowly stopped his splitting-style cultivation. He let his dark aura consume his pure aura. Then he slowly opened his eyes and found Empress Ruvaria inches away from his face, studying him intensely.

“That … was impressive,” she mumbled.

“It was nothing.” Zarian shrugged, a little surprised by her closeness.

Even for a projection, she looked and sounded real. He even felt heat radiating from the body. He wasn’t sure if this was the real empress or not anymore.

He sniffed.

He could smell her floral and herby scent.

Was that really her?

She slowly shifted away, letting him see more of the room past her youthful, elven face and bountiful rings of silver-gold hair. She seemed to study him with a spark in her glowing green eyes.

“You are a curious problem, Zarian Darkrun,” she murmured. “It has been thousands of years since I’ve seen someone of your talent. If we were to ignore how you could bring an apocalypse down on us once again, your Feats of Adventure are going to be filled to the brim.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Feats of Adventure?” Zarian raised an eyebrow.

“A record of sorts that the Star System keeps. You ever wonder what really grants you access to the Throne of the Adventurer King?”

“Feats of Adventure,” Zarian replied.

“Exactly. It’s more important than your levels, alignment, traits, skills, stats, and even achievements. Those are all shown to you because it is a reliable motivator. But Feats of Adventure belongs to the Star System, and those records aren’t shown. All that matters is if you can accomplish enough feats of quality to earn passage to the throne. And those feats can be anything, even something as small as navigating the ultimate invisible maze on a Lesser World.”

“It’ll be a little unfair if the Darkrun Apocalypse is considered a Feat of Adventure, wouldn’t it?” Zarian asked.

The empress looked at him long and hard. “It wouldn’t be. That is too destructive to the Star System itself and goes against the game. You can rest assured of that. Your other feats, on the other hand, are worthy of recording.”

“To be fair, I’m the biggest nepo baby around. I’m kind of starting on a strong footing compared to most. Maybe these Feats of Adventures should dock a few points off.”

Zarian shrugged again, feeling uncomfortable from receiving so much praise from the empress. The idea behind the Feats of Adventures, an invisible recording of accomplishments that could lead to earning the biggest prize of the Star System, was thrilling. But it wasn’t his primary goal. He wanted control of the biggest power inside and outside of this universe.

The throne was … not really meant for him. He hadn’t even gained anything new after using cultivation on his aura to split it. He’d reached the point where it was harder to gain new traits because he’d solidified himself so much from the rapid growth prior.

He supposed it was a good thing Feats of Adventure existed in the background. Even if he didn’t get a power-up directly, knowing his grandest efforts would get recorded by the Star System counted for something.

“That wasn’t Basic Aura Manipulation, was it?” the empress asked. “Your aura ability. It was quite advanced. It couldn’t be the basic version.”

“It was the basic version of the trait,” he corrected.

“You call yourself a nepo baby, hm? Well, it is true. But if we remove your ability to cause an apocalypse with your Overwhelming Darkness, would you still have figured out a way?” she asked.

Zarian didn’t know how to answer that.

Without his darkness ability, there were plenty of situations he wouldn’t have survived. Without his scary origins, Zarian wasn’t sure if he would’ve gotten this far.

It was kind of questionable if he’d gotten this far because he had a major leg up or if he’d gotten here because of his hard work. He figured the leg up mattered more, which felt like a bitter pill to swallow.

But he refused to lie to himself and go on tirades about how he pulled himself up by the bootstraps and others weren’t as successful as him because they didn’t work as hard.

People who spoke about those platitudes while having the biggest nepo baby support were a bunch of fucking hypocrites and nitwits.

Zarian may be an idiot at the best of times, but he had some self-awareness about him. He was also aware of how he could go the extra mile and risk it all when most others wouldn’t, for himself and for his friends, so he wasn’t completely reliant on just what was given to him.

“I think by now you’ve already heard of the story of how I killed myself to save a friend. But I imagine you haven’t heard how I first broke my brain,” Zarian said. “I didn’t have to. I could’ve relied on my darkness for everything. But I wanted to push myself as a wizard. So I nearly tore my brain apart to cast multiple spells simultaneously at a level I probably shouldn’t have. I nearly killed myself doing that. Wasn’t the first time I nearly killed myself, definitely not the last, but it was a memorable moment among my multiple near-death experiences.”

Despite being a reserved elf, the empress had little ways to show her thoughts. She had long eyelashes, too, so when she blinked rapidly before leaving her eyelids half closed to match her sidelong look and slight pout, the expression was strangely cute on her.

Her ears evened out, too.

“It is strange to say this, Zarian Darkrun, but at this moment, I’m glad you survived the ordeal and made yourself a better wizard. You continue to draw my curiosity like none before you.”

Zarian slowly nodded. “Um, thanks, empress.”

“There is no need for thanks. You are indeed a child of immense nepotism. But so are my children and children’s children and the others of my progeny. Yet, they lack a certain spark.”

“What’s that spark?”

“The heart of an adventurer.” The empress slowly turned away from him. “Now let us move on, since I’ve held you up already. Behold, this next chamber will test you even further.”

Zarian could now pay attention to his surroundings better, which was hard earlier since the empress could take up so much of one’s attention. Looking around, he noticed he was in an enclosure with walls made of imperfect Glacial Air Stone.

He could tell based on how the walls were slightly less translucent, making them more noticeable while pale white. The ceiling was the same.

It looked like Hannah wanted him completely contained. Outside of the enclosure was another chamber that was cavernous while looking like a massive playpen with different colored tunnels that were also made of imperfectly see-through Glacial Air Stone.

Many of the tunnels stuck to their own routes along the floor, on the walls, or on the ceiling, which was the case for the tunnels colored red, green, and blue. But the white tunnels branched out in all directions and surfaces.

The point where all the tunnels mostly connected was at the dark cube towers placed around the cavernous playpen. There were dozens of them, almost like a district of towers in the village above.

How did Hannah find the time to make all of this? It was a mystery to even Zarian. But he saw how nothing was moving, shifting, or reconfiguring here. It was a much more stable place, despite also being more puzzling.

After a quick scan, Zarian’s eyes focused on the red tunnel far across the chamber to his left. He saw a squad of paladins traversing through the tunnel that stayed on the ground.

They looked bruised up and battered, but they remained alive. Hannah had gone soft on them. Zarian appreciated that a lot.

“Okay, back to the game. How do I get my path to theirs or vice versa?” Zarian sprinted forward.

“You won’t use your void spells?” the empress asked.

“That would go against the game and risk pissing off Hannah. She might kill the paladins instantly then,” Zarian said. “Instead, I need to find how to intersect with them so I can play my role as big bad dungeon boss.”

“You are showing me the ways of a superb adventurer,” the empress said. “I can only imagine how your Feats of Adventure look.”

“You keep complimenting me like that, Ruvaria, and I’m going to think you either want to adopt me or play with me.” He flashed a grin at her while he was mid stride.

A tiny red tint colored the empress’s cheeks.

Zarian somehow stumbled and fell over. He quickly rolled back to the soles of his rugged metal and leather boots. He looked up and saw that the empress was gone.

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

Or maybe it didn’t matter.

Zarian shrugged and kept running. Eventually, he entered a tower and found an interesting station filled with turned-off screens, buttons, and multiple closed doorways.

The screens turned on with a loud click.

One of them showed the faces of the paladins as if they were looking directly at him. They must’ve entered a similar tower and station filled with buttons and closed off doors. They looked shocked, angry, and murderous.

A different screen showed something that threw Zarian for a loop. It looked like they were going to play a mini-game against each other.

On Zarian’s side was the option for him to dial down the consequences for having losses. Hannah was nice enough to give him that option, with the setting already placed at the maximum output.

Zarian decided to leave it maxed for the sake of being authentic to the game. It looked like victory over the mini-game would let him have access to the paladins, as if they were treats for him and Para.

“Hannah … you are a devious and cruel dungeon mistress,” Zarian said. “I can dig it.”