What Do You Mean I Have To Comprehend Dao As A Mortal God?

”My Lord?”

I jerked awake at the sound, only to find a blurry red face looking down at me in worry.

”Olivia?” I asked, the figure slowly coming back into focus to reveal Olivia’s face.

”My Lord, you should have called for me,” She sighed.

I looked around to see that the Anomalies I’ve defeated were still scattered around and the Anomaly that I had absorbed the life energy from had crumbled into a pile of crystals.

I chuckled, ”Well... I didn’t expect things to end up like this... And I had things handled.”

Her brows furrowed slightly, ”Forgive my impudence, my Lord... But I do not consider your current state as proof that you had things handled...”

”Well... I’m still here aren’t I?”

She sighed again, ”My Lord... For your safety, I’m going to have to suggest a rule that you aren’t allowed to walk around rifts alone anymore.”

Fair enough...

Olivia looked around, ”So... What happened here, my Lord?”

”As you could see... Anomalies attacked again and I dealt with it. I’m more curious how you knew I was here though?”

”A few of the residents came running and said you might need help so I came running.”

Ah... Most likely the bunny girls who had been guarding the entrance earlier.

Olivia then nodded in the direction of the crystals, ”So what is this? A new skill of yours?”

”Are you asking about the crystals or what happened to them specifically?”

She paused, obviously not expecting such a question.

”The crystals,” She decided.

”Well I’m going to answer both anyway. The crystals are another Anomaly. Stronger than the ones that attacked us earlier... Or at least I believe so... I didn’t actually fight it directly... As for what happened, I did awaken a new skill but that took a lot of energy out of me. I tried to absorb life energy from the Anomaly but passed out before I could complete the process. I guess without life energy, it crumbled to dust and left the crystals behind.”

Olivia looked at the crystals that remained on the ground with an unreadable expression.

That brought a question to my mind.

”Are the crystals worth a lot?” I asked.

Olivia shook her head, ”I’m not sure, my Lord. But I suppose we could bring some back to have them appraised.”

From what I can see, they are translucent and each of them had a different hue in colour. I’m not sure if they are something that is unique to this World or the crystals are also something that can be found in our World as well.

If these were valuable... These Anomalies would basically turn into walking cash bags for us.

Right then, a sound of footsteps came from another tunnel to the side and I felt panic well up in me as I tried to stand up.

Olivia shook her head and pressed her palm against my chest, stopping me from doing so.

”It’s alright, my Lord. That is Leena. I sent her to scout ahead just in case there were more Anomalies.”

I turned my head in the direction of the sound and sure enough, Leena emerged from within the shadows of the tunnel, all kitted out and armed to the teeth.

”Miss Olivia... I found something that you might want to see. Oh. Are you alright, Mortal God? You gave us quite a scare when we found you lying unconscious on the ground.”

I waved my hand at her, ”I’m fine. Sorry for worrying all of you.”

Leena shook her head, ”Miss Olivia was the most worried about you, Mortal God. When she scre--”

”That’s enough, Leena. You said you had something to show me?” Olivia asked, interrupting her.

Leena nodded, ”The tunnel over here leads to a ledge where I found this.”

The centauress lifts up her hand to show what looked like some kind of plastic tube that had coloured liquid inside of it.

It took me a moment to realize that the object she was holding was one of the glow sticks that I had dropped earlier.

Since Leena had mentioned something about a ledge, it must have been the one that did not manage to reach all the way to the bottom.

I guess that made sense that this place was connected to that deep chasm that we saw earlier since there were Mana Crystals located here.

I suppose if we want to reach the bottom, we can use this as an alternate route instead of where Maylene had guided us to.

At least using this route would be less exposed than trying to climb down that giant chasm.

I nodded at Leena, ”I assume there is also a route that would lead deeper down to the bottom of the chasm?”

Leena nodded, ”There is a spiral path around the chasm that leads to the bottom, Mortal God.”

”Perfect then. We’ll guide the rabbit girls out of here before we come back here. We could even use the space they vacated to set up a base of operations.”

I moved to stand up and this time, Olivia did not stop me.

Although she did give me a pointed look and asked, ”If I may be allowed to ask, my Lord... What is the new skill you have awakened?”

I paused to consider it for a moment before shrugging my shoulders, ”I honestly don’t really know what exactly it is to be honest... I guess... If I had to give it a name... It’s something like reality manipulation?”

Both Olivia and Leena stared at me for a good few seconds.

”What?” Olivia finally asked.

I hummed, ”Hmm... Like I said, I’m still not too sure of it... In fact, it kind of feels incomplete... Like I’ve only awakened a very small part of it...”

”And that part is reality manipulation?” Leena asked.

”I’m not even sure if it is, to be honest... The thing is that when I first awakened it, I wanted to Anomaly in front of me to stop moving and the ability basically guided me to command it to ’stop’. When I gave that command, the Anomaly stopped moving despite the fact that it wasn’t chained or restrained by anything visible.”

Olivia turned to look at the pile of crystals that were the remains of the Anomaly, ”You spoke a single word and it obeyed?”

”I wouldn’t say it obeyed. Like I said, it felt like reality manipulation. It’s like when I told it to stop, it became the new reality where it was stopped. It could not override the reality where I wanted it to stop so the only thing it could do was stop.”

”That is... An interesting power...”

”Why the surprise though? Are there no Mortal Gods that can manipulate reality?”

Olivia shook her head, ”I do not believe that at this moment, there is anyone who is able to do something like that... Or at the very least, no one has gone public with that ability. It could be entirely possible that there is someone who can do that but they are keeping it a secret. If there was someone with an ability like that, they could alter the entire reality of our World, could they?”

I grimaced, ”Well... There’s just one problem though... Just asking the Anomaly to stop literally drained me of all my energy to the point that I collapsed the next second later. I’m not sure if the energy needed was from just the activation of the skill itself or it also scales with how big of a scale the manipulation was.”

”Was that why you were knocked out, my Lord?”

I nodded, ”One of them, I suppose... I did just finish fighting a group of Anomalies before I awakened that power and after I used it, I didn’t even have enough strength to stand and I tried to absorb the life energy from the Anomaly... But it turns out their life energy is tainted and I almost... Wait...”

I stopped myself when I realised something important...

Before I passed out, I had purified the life energy from the miasma to circulate it back into my body... But I never actually expelled the miasma from within my body...

”Cover me!” I called out, immediately settling myself back into my meditative state.

I focused my senses back into my body and my body glowed with light, right there, beside my core, was a blob of inky blackness that was the miasma I had purified.

Looking at it, it seemed to have latched itself onto my core like some kind of parasite and it was slowly pulling itself closer towards my core.

I immediately focused my will on it and extracted it from my core, making sure to cleanse any remains of it before I pushed it out from my body.

I then felt something push up from my throat and I heaved, only for a black mass to be expelled from my mouth to splatter on the floor.

Ughh... That’s disgusting... At least I remembered about it before it got too serious...