The early morning sun was still hiding behind the dark clouds in the sky. Many players within the city had already figured out that something was wrong. Local guilds had already washed their hands off this matter. They politely requested the team leader of the subjugation team that was dispatched from the capital six years ago to investigate.

Speaking of this team leader, the local guilds were full of indignation regarding this scourge. For the past six years there had been no invasion whatsoever so this guy treated himself as if he was on a vacation.

Always ordering around the local guilds to do his bidding, occupying another's luxurious guild building as his private quarters, being forced to send beautiful female players with no special background for "assistance", always cooped up in his house not stepping a foot outside to provide support for the dispatched members of Astral Divination Guild.

Now that something out of their expectation was finally occuring, this scourge had no choice but to do his job. When the guy finally came out of his house he addressed his subordinates, local guilds and Astral Divination Guild members.

"Since nine in the morning, Carnova's weather showed such strange signs after six years. I have a suspicion that they would surely invade today so we should prepare for an all out confrontation. I want all the combatants ready for battle within ten minutes and the others…. well, just don't get in the way. Heh!"

Team leader snickered as he went back to his house again, this time to prepare for a battle. Other combatants also hastily went their way to make preparations while the non-combatants were filled with rage and indignation at his remark. Not all awakenings are combat oriented. In fact the majority awakens in a different branch unrelated to combat. But there's always discrimination in any group consisting of different people in it. Players who are combat oriented would covertly or overtly show disdain and mockery for others different from them.

Ten minutes later, every combatant was armed to the teeth and got into their battle formation as they steadily made their way to the Dimensional Gate in the city square. After their arrival they decided to wait out the entire day for those invaders.

Five minutes, ten minutes, one hour, two hours and finally around the fourth hour they all sensed spatial fluctuations. All the players got tense. They readied themselves for a gruesome fight.

Swoosh!

The Dimensional Gate disappeared.

"...."

"...."

"...."

"... Wh-what happened!?"

The team leader shouted incredulously. All the players had a look of disbelief and shock on their faces. In all their life since becoming a player they had never witnessed such a thing.

Many years later this incident will be known as "the only Gate to have been cleared without any player intervention."

°°°°

Azure Limbo always considered himself as a prudent one among the abyss spawns.

He who doesn't let his guard down even if the opponent is dead. If the opponent was weak enough to be done in by an anomaly he still wouldn't be complacent; rather he would check to see if the opponent's body, mind and soul had been thoroughly obliterated or if they left behind a resurrection method. He would also scout ahead and gather information to see if they had a strong backer behind them who had the means to harm him at present or later down the line. If he found anything ominously suspicious or couldn't confirm many of his doubts and worse still there was a possibility where he would be forced to take a gamble with his life just to achieve his objective, he would then decisively abandon any direct action or covert scheming against them and retreat as far away as possible.

He would many times be mocked by his fellow peers for being too "cowardly".

They would jeer and say things like "Why would someone from a lust incubating branch need to do all this?". While someone from a different branch once reassured him by saying, "It is not like you're someone important enough for them to hunt you down to the end of the void, right?". One of the higher-ups once made a passing remark after learning about his conduct, "Do your work diligently. Stop wasting time on other insignificant things." Another condescending higher-up once rebuked him by saying, "Stop shivering while thinking that everything out there wants to kill you. How could you progress further if you have such a weak mindset?"

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Yet the reality proved otherwise.

Those peers who once asked him why he needed to be so cautious ended up meeting their end by regretfully targeting those who had strange rings, necklaces or accessories on their body which shockingly housed the soul fragments of ancient powerhouses. When they were detected by those old geezers they became nourishment for the item bearer.

That person from a different branch who once said he wasn't important enough for others to take action against him was later captured and turned into a dog who was endlessly humiliated by all sorts of savage beasts. Apparently one of the targets was able to resurrect by unknown means and later became powerful enough to track and subdue that dude alive. His fate was surely worse than death.

That higher-up who "advised" him not to waste time on insignificant things was later crippled by her own peers for offending someone who couldn't be offended at any cost. She was then sealed and packaged into a gift wrap scheduled to be sent to that bigshot to appease their anger. As for her ending, who knows.

And that particular condescending higher-up? He once boasted about how he was more qualified than a certain fella he knew and proclaimed confidently that he would bring more satisfactory results than that incompetent ever could. The person he was mocking later was able to capture the interest of someone from the Core Area, thus swiftly climbing the ladder to success.

That person held a deep grudge against that guy who apparently made a habit of mocking others constantly. So before moving to the Core Area that fella decided to pull some strings with the newfound authority. Thus the arrogant guy was sent to the frontlines and "heroically fought but passed away" or so the news spread. All those in the know already figured out what happened to him but nobody grieved or demanded an investigation because that guy was truly an eyesore.

Considering all those cases that he experienced during his young age of only 3 million and a bit more, he had sufficient evidence to be confident in his cautious nature.

Thus when he was "watering the hole" all over the place and busy with his schemes but got inexplicably transmigrated in this world all of a sudden, one could only imagine the sheer amount of panic and fear he felt on his first day. The most terrifying thing a cautious person dreaded was neither an overpowered enemy nor an enigmatic mastermind but the realization of all their precautions failing without even an inkling of knowledge about how it failed.

So his first day in this world was spent with him waking up in a dark alleyway inside a foreign body which had a knife dangling from its neck, having thoroughly pierced all the way to the nape and outward. After calming himself from the initial dread he suspected being dragged into a powerful illusion. He was aware of certain illusion abilities that can put the victim's perception in a weakling's body. After dragging the victim into the illusion, torturing or killing that possessed body by characters in that illusion could inflict mental damage to the victim and using that damaged mind the illusionist can infiltrate the soul and thus gaining control over it in an instant.

Having remembered this information from his Memory Palace bloodline ability he decided to not to panic and neutralize the immediate threat. He glanced at the knife and concluded that the "killing part" of the illusion had already happened which left him puzzled. By convention shouldn't it be after the "possession" part? From the first glance, he surmised that the body he possessed was small in height with features similar to humans. It should be a young human kid's body and the absence of aether in the body meant it was a mortal human.

Anyways, this body was in a precarious state having lost a significant amount of blood but still being able to anchor his soul and gain consciousness which is already bizarre for those illusion abilities. He preemptively used the Rules of Anomaly bloodline ability as soon as he gained consciousness, a habit formed through the experience of 3 million years, and turned his body into an anomaly that can still move his hands to remove the knife.

He decided to close the wound, repair the organs and replenish the lost blood as quickly as possible lest the illusionist makes their move quicker than him. He tried activating the healing-type bloodline abilities but to his horror he realized that he forgot how to do it. The relevant memory stored in his Memory Palace was gone without a trace. The only memory left about it was that he once had healing-type abilities and that's it.

He felt a chill run down his spine. An abyss spawn could lose their life, be refined into a puppet or even be permanently metamorphosed to any form imaginable to their opponent but he had never heard of someone being able to specifically target the Memory Palace ability and erase certain abilities' memory.

He had a doubt growing in his mind. Was he really in an illusion? If so then why is his Memory Palace itself not disabled? If the opponent could specifically target a bloodline ability to such a detail then wouldn't he be a meat in chopping block if the Memory Palace ability was disabled?

Congenitally this Memory Palace ability stored the bloodline abilities unlocking condition and usage methods as well as all information gained through perception since birth. Any being capable of harming it would also be able to easily eradicate him. There is just no reason for them to resort to such a roundabout execution. Unless the dude was getting a sick kick out of a weakling's struggle?

All of a sudden his vision started to blur, putting a stop to his analysis.

He was alarmed! He hastily checked for all the available bloodline abilities in the Memory Palace. To his delight he was able to find Lust Siphon still available for his use. Unsure of the surroundings as he also lost the relevant ability to check beyond the perceptive range, he decided to siphon his own lust instead and used it to close the wound, regrow damaged body parts and replenish the blood in the body by stimulating the bone marrow through the ability.

After all of his injuries healed he felt as if he had spent a millennia fornicating without a break. He had entered the sage mode which further increased his concentration and rationality. He stood up from the ground and looked towards the end of this alleyway.

It was midnight and this abyss spawn had lots of questions that needed to be answered.