"Mmmm…" Rui's dark eyes sharpened.

Kane was on point with his judgment.

"This place belongs in the Human Domain."

His voice was as soft as it was detached.

BADUMP

He activated his Martial Heart, spreading his senses across the Mellow, searching for the Divine Doctor.

Much to his disappointment, he couldn't find him.

His displeasure darkened the atmosphere as his expression grew more severe.

"Relax, man," Kane put a hand on Rui's shoulder. "I'm sure we'll soon find him."

He didn't respond.

STEP

He leaped off the cliff, free-falling off the cliff, plummeting straight down to the Mellow.

Kane heaved a deep sigh, following suit.

THUD

"Now what?" Kane asked, landing behind him. "I suppo-"

RUMBLE

He paused as Rui activated a breathing technique, bending heaven and earth with breath bending as he extracted every single fauna lifeform across the entirety of the region that stretched as far and wide as a town did.

One by one, every animal of every species had a capacity for intelligence was extracted from the forest, drawn towards Rui by powerful wind currents and pressure gradients.

Rui stared at them with chilling eyes.

"Soul Void."

Suddenly, the world went dark as a flicker of light drew the attention of their consciousness to the side.

Sleep. Rui whispered to their subconscious mind.

Ironically, they did fall asleep on the spot instantly.

"Hahaha!" Kane burst out laughing. "These creatures aren't even Apprentice-level, dude. You gotta tone it down."

SNAP!

He flicked his fingers hard, causing a powerful shockwave to wake all of them up, deactivating his Martial Heart. Without it, he managed to get them all in a deep trance before quickly activating Plurichroma.

Immediately, the world around them changed radically, going through every single frequency of light and sound as he swiftly created SOUL models on every single creature.

He couldn't help but marvel at how it was a breeze.

The mental stress he experienced during this process was trivial in comparison to the inheritance from the Elder Tree. The latter had drastically improved his information influx stress tolerance, allowing him to engage in greater processing power in the heat of the moment.

So much so that things that he used to find somewhat stressful had become a lot more manageable. While his mastery of the Angel of Laplace had yet to reach a stage where he could use it without being frozen in place, he had made a significant process.

Who knew that the solution to making progress on that front was mental torture?

Soon enough, the SOUL models on each of the creatures were complete.

Now came the moment of truth.

He conveyed an image of the Divine Doctor through non-verbal communication, convincing his subconscious mind that he really was there, and sure enough, they recalled the Divine Doctor really well as they immediately began reliving their memories of him.

That was not the surprising part.

What stunned Rui was how long ago these memories were created based on their freshness.

"He was here…a day ago?" Rui's dark eyes lit up with surprise.

"What?!" Kane stared at Rui in shock.

A flicker of realization dawned within Rui's empty eyes. "He took much longer to reach the Mellow than we did. He's a human, so, of course. What was a three-month journey for us might have been a decade-long voyage for the Divine Doctor. But still…"

It was an astronomical coincidence.

Yet Kane didn't care, turning around as he spread his senses far and wide across the Mellow. "Where is he?! We must find the bastard!"

On that point, Rui was in complete agreement.

"Search for him in the forest while I search through their memories," Rui told Kane as a hint of vigor momentarily returned to his voice.

It was surreal that they had gotten this close to him.

They had already set out looking for him roughly three years ago.

'Where did all that time go?'

The darkness within Rui's eyes stirred as he peered into the minds of his hapless targets. (C) content.

He spotted their memories of the Divine Doctor, walking across the Mellow earlier that day.

They stayed away from him.

Almost as if they instinctively sensed the menace that he was.

The Divine Doctor walked across the Mellow, experiencing the region with detached clinical curiosity.

And then he disappeared.

"…What?" A chilling whisper escaped him as his eyes sharpened to slits.

He didn't understand.

He had already evaluated that it could not possibly be due to a broken memory. Broken memories did not result in a single person disappearing from the memory while everything remained pristine, as opposed to the entire memory degenerating as a whole.

On top of that, this was hours ago.

As primitive as these creatures were, surely their memory was not that pitiful.

THUD

He dropped the creatures immersed, deep in thought, as he waited for Kane to return.

Yet, he never did.

His desolate eyes lit up with concern. "…Kane?"

His senses spread across the entirety of the forest as his Martial Heart blazed into fury.

Yet, his friend had all but disappeared.

RUMBLE…

Raw peril flushed out from his body, causing heart attacks from the surrounding creatures frozen in a trance.

Yet, he didn't care.

His dark eyes, devoid of life, flickered with a single emotion.

Fear.

"He's not dead." Rui declared. "They're not dead."

Yet the uncertainty in his voice could not hide itself. Those words were to convince himself more than anybody else.

His eyes flashed with unfathomable power as he activated the true Angel of Laplace. An ocean of data of vectors converged onto him within the depths of his mind.

Yet, it could not so much as make him flinch.

The darkness within his eyes stirred as he processed every ounce of data at breakneck speeds. His horrific tribulations with the inheritance elevated the speed at the sheer speed at which he processed everything that the Angel of Laplace threw at him.

Within an hour, he was done.

And that was when the very flow of time reversed.

It was as though the fabric of reality had been rewound.

He turned back time further and further back.

Second by second.

Minute by minute.

"…There," he whispered as his dark eyes widened with a flicker of hope.

Kane suddenly reappeared in his visions of the past as he spotted the exact moment and place where Kane had disappeared.

It was on the banks of a lake.

RUMBLE!

In one fell swoop, Rui made an enormous leap as his Martial Heart flared with power, propelling himself close to the place where Kane had disappeared.

Yet, when he arrived, he hesitated.

He didn't know what this esoteric phenomenon was.

For all he knew, it could be something that erased targets out of reality.

…It could even be that Kane and the Divine Doctor were dead.

There was only one reason he didn't think so.

"…The prophecy."

A desolate whisper escaped him.

The prophecy showed him meeting the Divine Doctor on a beach. If the Mellow was always his end goal, then the probability he would die when disappearing due to the bizarre esoteric phenomenon was low.

Thus, he could inductively conclude that both Kane and the Divine Doctor were alive, in which case…

He heaved a soft sigh before stepping forward on the banks of the lake as well.

WHOOSH!

He, too, disappeared.