Odyssey of the Blind God

The next closest stellar system seemed to be quite a distance away from his position. This was something Nial had already guessed since everything around him seemed to be perfectly isolated. That was rather unfortunate.

It made things a little bit more annoying as he had to expand the range of his long-distance traveling device, which increased the expenses considerably.

However, that was still something he could deal with. Nial was doing great, completing his research and starting his experiments. With the Grasp of Eclipse movement technique, Nial could now jump across the entire stellar system as well.

The materials he found were of great use and he extracted their essence to progress with his experiments. Nial ended up collecting more of these specific materials before he returned to his creations which were completed roughly a year later.

His understanding of the Grasp of Eclipse movement technique was still not perfect since he had yet to comprehend the laws of darkness, space, and energy. But that was hardly a problem since he could replicate a teleportation device with the extracts of the materials he found, a few other extremely rare materials, and a bunch of forgotten runic constellations that were combined with various overlapping miniature runic constellations.

"Finally…" Nial thought with a heavy heave. He was not exhausted physically but his mental health had taken a big toll on being stranded in a stellar system far away from anyone else. Only the Devil Roc had been by his side, however, that didn't really help him because the Devil Roc's conversation skills were below average, obviously.

The Devil Roc was loyal and heed the commands he was given, but he was far from talkative. He was the best example of a silent follower, though a humongous follower, who was hardly able to travel around silently.

Now that Nial had finished his teleportation device, he intended to test it out. He inserted bits of his dark energy into the device that looked like a compass before he ended up on the other side of the stellar system after picking his destination on the holographic screen that was projected on the compass.

The compass was restricted to be used only by Nial because he was the only one in possession of the source of dark energy.

Restricting the type of energy the compass accepted to dark energy brought many benefits, including the possibility to create a precise system that used the most purified bits of the inserted dark energy to replicate the Grasp of Eclipse movement technique's powers and effects.

Nial was certainly satisfied with his product but upon inserting his entire accumulated dark energy into the compass, he noticed that the range of teleportation was still not enough to teleport him to the next stellar system. There was a detailed logic inscribed in the compass. It used the differences in the surrounding mana to sense meteorites, objects that were loosely flying through the air, and planets that belonged to stellar systems. The mana of most projectiles in the open space was avoided by the space's mana, while the opposite was the case when it came to the planets in a stellar system. Living planes, how Nial liked to think of them, attracted the space's mana!

The mana in the space of the isolated stellar system was also trying to infiltrate the planets, every single corner of them, to be precise. However, the planets seemed to have a natural 'defense' against the infiltrating mana, though Nial was not sure why it was necessary to defend against them.

"Since I need more dark energy, I might as well advance to the Mythician rank before moving on!" Nial told himself, finally mentally ready to focus on his cultivation progress. He knew that it would take quite a while to advance to the Mythician rank but it was not as if he didn't have time to spare. Worrying about his family was also not necessary.

The 100,000+ Shadow Monsters of Dexter and more than a dozen powerful Devils were with Sabrina and Mathias. There was definitely no reason for him to be worried about his friends and family. As for the issues that may or may not occur in the Orion Shelter, Nial was pretty sure that his people could solve them, in the worst case with the Tier-3 Forgotten Broken Runic Weapons that had been stored away as well!

Without the need to worry about anything or anyone, Nial finally traveled to the center of the isolated stellar system, or a little bit further away since the small sun was a little bit too hot for him.

He enjoyed warmth more than cold, which was quite interesting since his dark energy was of cold nature and far from warm, hot, or anything related to warm temperatures.

Being close enough to the small sun but far enough to cultivate properly, Nial used the dark energy that had replenished by now to create his darkness domain. He was even using the accumulated dark energy inside his Heart of Darkness to expand his darkness domain before he exerted the Vortex of Abyss cultivation technique that created a tremendous suctioning force all over his darkness domain.

He made sure that the suctioning force was evenly spread out and that there wouldn't be an issue absorbing the highly purified and compressed mana in the surrounding space. It was all absorbed into the darkness domain where it was naturally transformed into dark energy. The dark energy was then used to further expand the darkness domain, which made it possible for Nial to easily expand his range of influence.

More mana was pulled toward him and Nial repeated the same process over and over again until he reached the limit. After his darkness domain had expanded to more than ten kilometers in each direction, it formed into a ball of darkness, evenly spread out and strong enough to block any advances from possible invaders around him. Of course, Nial didn't expect anyone to attack all of a sudden.

After all, the stellar system was isolated, and the strongest beasts were at the Keltia rank. They had already faced Nial once, and wouldn't dare to face him again.

Nial didn't need to take precautions for all kinds of possibilities in his mind, but he still did so. Enough messed up things had happened to him in the past and he didn't really want to repeat any of them.

He was better off being over-prepared than lacking preparation and getting caught off-guard.

Time passed slowly once Nial finished expanding his darkness domain to the limit of his control. He took a deep breath and started the real cultivation process, which was consistent with absorbing a tremendous amount of dark energy and finishing the remaining Darkness Pillars until he had nine of them. The creation of the remaining Darkness Pillars was certainly not fast but Nial's multitasking talent was not to be underestimated.

His highest focus was on the manufacturing process of the Darkness Pillars while the rest of his mind chose to take the initiative and absorb more and more mana from the surroundings. The massive mana he absorbed at a time was more than Nial could use at once. This inevitably forced him to either accelerate the creation process of his Darkness Pillars or to work on multiple Darkness Pillars at the same time.

Nial being Nial, he, of course, chose to act like an idiot and take the more dangerous path!