Myriad Heavens: Rise of the Rune God

Chapter 260: Chapter 261: Locked Out

The void around the ancient ruin grew crowded.

What had started as a handful of early arrivals quickly turned into a gathering of dozens. New auras flared into existence every few moments. More and more Multiversal beings locked onto the leftover energy signature and teleported straight in. Some arrived as streams of pure light that slowly hardened into humanoid shapes. Others unfolded from strange geometric forms, their bodies assembling piece by piece. A few came in bestial bodies, still radiating the leftover heat of traveling at extreme speed. Cloaking techniques dropped one after another. Their owners decided there was no longer any point in hiding. Too many people were already here. Stealth meant nothing now.

The crowd kept growing. Beings of every rank and shape filled the empty space around the ruin. The void, which had been silent and still only minutes ago, now hummed with dozens of overlapping auras. The pressure in the area climbed steadily.

A Beginner-tier man with short silver hair spotted a familiar face in the crowd. He raised a hand and called out.

”Hey, old man Toren. Didn’t expect to see you all the way out here.”

The one called Toren turned around. He was an Initiate, broad-shouldered and solid, with a heavy hammer strapped across his back. He gave a short, rough laugh.

”Kael? You’re still alive? Last I heard, you were stuck in the back end of nowhere trying to refine some weird principle. Figured you’d burned yourself out by now.”

”I finished it,” Kael said, drifting closer through the void. ”Barely. Nearly lost half my cultivation in the process. Then this signal showed up out of nowhere, and I figured I might as well take a look. What about you?”

”Same story. Got nothing better to do.” Toren glanced at the sealed barrier and shrugged. ”Though it looks like someone already beat all of us here.”

”Yeah. Heard the barrier got opened and closed again before most of us even arrived.” Kael shook his head. ”Whoever it was, they knew what they were doing.”

Nearby, two Adept-tier women who had clearly known each other for a very long time met in the crowd. They exchanged a quick, familiar embrace.

”Lira. It’s been what, three billion years?”

The other woman smiled. ”Closer to four. You still using that same spear technique?”

”It still works. You still talk too much?”

They both laughed. It was warm, easy, the kind of greeting between people who had survived enough together to skip formalities. But even as they smiled, their eyes kept drifting back to the sealed barrier. The tension underneath was obvious. They were here for the same reason as everyone else.

The lower-ranked beings — Beginners, Initiates, Adepts, and even most of the Advanced tier — began testing the barrier almost immediately. They could not help themselves. The ruin was right there. The prize was right there. And the only thing between them and it was a single wall.

One after another, they stepped forward and threw their best methods at it.

A Beginner, young and eager, slammed a pure force punch into the surface. He put everything he had behind it. The impact vanished without a sound. No ripple. No shake. Nothing. The barrier simply swallowed the attack as if it had never happened. The young man stumbled back, staring at his own fist in disbelief.

An Initiate followed. She used a spatial folding technique, one that had cracked lesser seals before. She compressed a sharp fold in space and drove it at the barrier like a blade. The fold collapsed the instant it touched the surface. It just folded in on itself and disappeared. The Initiate’s face went pale.

An Adept woman stepped up next. She released a complex web of conceptual erosion — dozens of thin threads designed to eat away at the logic holding a seal together. The web touched the barrier and frayed apart like smoke in a strong wind. Gone in less than a breath. She stared at her empty hands for a long moment before stepping back.

An Advanced-tier man with burning red eyes roared in frustration. He poured a full-powered principle attack into the same spot everyone else had tried. The energy was massive. It should have cracked open a lesser barrier like an egg. The barrier simply refused to acknowledge it. The attack hit, vanished, and left no mark whatsoever. The man stood there breathing hard, his red eyes wide with disbelief.

Frustration spread through the crowd like a disease.

”This is ridiculous,” someone muttered.

”Did the first guy really open this thing by himself?”

”Must have. The spatial traces are still there. You can feel them if you focus.”

”Then how? What did he do differently?”

No one had a good answer. They kept trying. They kept failing. The barrier did not care. It did not respond. It simply existed, absolute and indifferent, and every attack that touched it simply stopped being.

Then the first Expert arrived who actually understood runes.

She was a tall woman with ink-black hair that fell straight to her waist. Faint glowing symbols rotated slowly around her wrists like living bracelets. She did not look at the crowd. She did not acknowledge the dozens of beings watching her. She floated closer to the barrier and simply looked at it.

She stared for a long time. Her eyes moved carefully across the surface, tracing patterns that no one else could see. Minutes passed. The crowd watched in silence. Some of them held their breath.

Finally, she raised one hand. She traced a short sequence in the air with her fingertip. The motion was precise, unhurried, and confident. A small, clean gap opened in the barrier. It was just large enough for a single person to walk through. The edges glowed softly, stable and controlled.

She stepped through without looking back. Then she turned, raised her hand again, and sealed the gap behind her with the same casual precision. A moment later, she walked into the light door at the ruin’s entrance and vanished completely.

The crowd stared.

Two more Experts arrived shortly after. Both carried solid rune comprehension. Each of them repeated the exact same process. Read the barrier. Understand the pattern. Open a personal gap. Step through. Close it again. Enter the teleport gate. None of them left the barrier damaged. None of them struggled. It looked almost easy when you knew what you were doing.

The crowd outside went quiet for several seconds.

Then the thin man with the orbiting seals spoke up. His voice cut through the silence clearly.

”Runes,” he said. ”It’s runes. The first one who went in must have read the symbols properly. That’s why the Experts who know runes can open it. The barrier isn’t meant to be broken. It’s meant to be read.”

A murmur ran through the group.

”You’re saying this whole place is a rune inheritance?” someone asked.

”Most likely,” the thin man replied. The seals around his shoulders spun faster as he thought. ”Or at least heavily tied to them. The builder used runes as the foundation for everything. The barrier, the seal, probably the contents inside. If you can’t read the language, you can’t get in.”

A wave of rapid discussion broke out across the crowd. Voices overlapped. Arguments formed and dissolved in seconds.

Some of the lower-ranked beings immediately sat down in the void and started forcing their rune comprehension as fast as they could. They closed their eyes, pushed their awareness to the limit, and tried to grasp even the basics of the symbol language. Their faces twisted with concentration and desperation.

Others argued about whether it was even worth the effort this late.

”I only ever learned the basics. The simplest structures. There’s no way I can catch up in time,” a young Initiate said, his voice tight with frustration.

”Then you’re just here to watch,” an older Adept replied flatly.

”Better than dying for nothing.”

”Or better than standing here doing nothing while someone else takes everything.”

The arguments were still going when the void suddenly changed.

A new presence arrived.

It was heavier than anything that had come before. Far heavier. The pressure did not smash outward in a crude display. It did not announce itself with force or violence. It simply existed. And because it existed, everything else in the area felt smaller. Weaker. Less important. Conversations died mid-sentence. Laughter stopped. Even the arguments about runes went silent.

Every Beginner, Initiate, Adept, Advanced, and even the remaining Experts turned toward the source of the pressure. They moved aside instinctively. No one told them to. Their bodies simply did it, pulling back to make space for something that was fundamentally above them.

A woman stepped out of a fold in space.

She was beautiful in a clean, almost severe way. Long silver-white hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin was pale, almost luminous. Her eyes were the color of deep winter ice — cold, clear, and completely unbothered. Her robes were simple, without decoration or flourish, but they carried an authority that made the surrounding void feel more ordered just by her standing there. The space around her seemed to straighten, as if reality itself was tidying up in her presence.

She was a Master.

No one spoke. No one breathed too loudly. No one moved.

She did not look at any of them. She did not examine the barrier. She did not attempt to read a single rune. She simply raised one hand and pressed it forward.

A large section of the barrier tore open like thin paper.

The edges of the wound glowed briefly, then stayed open. There was no sequence. No reading. No understanding required. Just raw, overwhelming power applied directly. The barrier, which had rejected every attack from the lower ranks without even trembling, simply gave way. Because a Master told it to.

She walked through without slowing down. She entered the light door and vanished.

The silence lasted several full seconds after she was gone.

Then someone finally whispered, ”...As expected of a Master.”

Another voice, barely audible. ”They really are on a different level.”

”She didn’t even bother with the runes. Just ripped it open like it was nothing.”

”That’s the difference. The rest of us are still playing with techniques and trying to understand the rules. Masters treat this kind of seal like a mild inconvenience. Something to push past on the way to what they actually want.”

Before the comments could continue, more heavy presences began arriving.

One after another, Master-tier beings appeared in the void. Some came alone, silent and purposeful. Others brought entire groups with them — disciples, subordinates, or full delegations from major Multiversal branches and centers. Each Master tore their own opening in the barrier without effort. None of them closed the gaps behind them. They simply walked through with their people and entered the teleport gate, leaving the barrier scarred and open in multiple places.

The lower-ranked beings watched in silence. They floated in the void, small and still, and watched the gods walk past them.

”So this is what having a real backer looks like,” an Advanced-tier man said quietly. His voice was flat. Resigned.

”Yeah,” someone next to him replied. ”While we’re out here arguing about basic runes and trying to punch a wall, they just bring a Master and walk in like they own the place.”

”Some of those groups are from the big centers. You can tell by the sigils on their robes. Those are official delegations.”

”Doesn’t matter where they’re from. Once a Master decides to enter, the rest of us are just background. Decoration. We might as well not be here.”

Then the void shifted again.

This presence was different from the Masters who had come before.

It did not simply arrive. It settled over the area like a cold shadow that had always been there, waiting. Like something ancient and patient had finally decided to show itself. Several of the remaining Masters who had not yet entered actually paused mid-step. Their expressions changed. A few of the lower-ranked beings instinctively moved farther back, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the source of the pressure.

A tall, lean man stepped out of the darkness between spaces.

His hair was pure black. His eyes were the same color — dark, deep, and empty of anything resembling warmth. His expression carried the calm of someone who had stopped caring about consequences a very long time ago. Not the calm of peace. The calm of someone who had already decided that nothing around him mattered enough to react to. Residual annihilation energy clung to him like smoke that refused to fade. It curled faintly around his shoulders and fingers, black and hungry.

Someone in the crowd sucked in a sharp breath. Then another. Then several.

”Isn’t that... Vark the Annihilator?”

”The one wanted in every major sector?”

”Why the hell is he showing up openly like this? He’s supposed to be in hiding.”

”Shut the hell up. You should be thanking the multiverse he hasn’t wiped us all out of existence out of boredom. Don’t draw his attention.”

The whispers died instantly. No one wanted to be the one who made Vark look in their direction.

Vark ignored every single one of them. Every whisper. Every stare. Every tremor of fear. None of it registered. His gaze locked onto the ruin with a focus that was almost tender. For the first time since he appeared, a faint smile touched his mouth. It was small. Barely there. But it was real.

And he muttered, so quietly that only the nearest beings caught it, ”It finally appeared again... after trillions of years.”

He raised one hand.

The barrier in front of him did not tear. It did not crack. It did not rip open like paper. It simply ceased to exist in a clean, circular section large enough for him to walk through. One moment the barrier was there. The next moment it was not. No transition. No struggle. Just absence where something had been.

He stepped inside without looking back. He entered the light door and vanished.

The silence that followed was heavier than anything before. It pressed down on the crowd like a physical weight.

”...From what he muttered... it seemed like he knew this ruin,” someone finally said in a low, shaking voice.

”More like he’s been waiting for it. Trillions of years, he said.”

”This ruin just got a lot more interesting. And a lot more dangerous.”

”Did you see how the barrier just... stopped existing for him? The Masters tore it open. He erased it.”

”Don’t talk about him. Just don’t.”

A tacit understanding settled over everyone still outside who was below Master rank. No one tried to rush through the newly opened gaps. No one wanted to accidentally get in a Master’s way — especially not Vark’s. The risk was too obvious. Too final. Angering a normal Master could mean dying without ever understanding how it happened. Angering Vark could mean the entire local void simply stopped existing. Not destroyed. Erased. As if it had never been.

They would wait. They had no choice.

Only when the stream of Masters and their groups finally slowed would the rest of them move. And when that moment came, it would not be polite. It would not be orderly. It would be a race — and probably a fight — to reach the teleport gate first. Everyone knew it. No one said it out loud. But the tension in the void made it clear.

For now, the lower ranks simply floated in the empty space. They watched the broken sections of the barrier. They watched the fading traces of the powerful beings who had already gone inside. They waited, and they seethed, and they planned.

The ruin that had once been completely sealed was now open in multiple places. Gaps torn by Masters hung in the barrier like wounds that would not heal. The advantage of being first — the advantage Runar had claimed for himself — was already gone. What waited inside would no longer be a quiet inheritance for a single person to explore in peace.

It was about to become a battlefield.