Affinity:Chaos

Grey stared at the spot where the little girl disappeared for a long time with an odd look. He had a strange feeling when he saw the little girl and an ominous premonition. He could almost feel the threat of death just from looking at her.

"What a strange girl." Void commented.

"She's dangerous." Grey's expression was dark.

From the look the little girl gave him, he could tell she seemed to know who he was. If that was the case, she didn't have any good intentions toward him. Even with his current strength, he still felt danger which meant that the little girl definitely had the strength to threaten his life.

He rarely had intuitions like this, but whenever he did, they were mostly true.

He threw the thought to the back of his head and looked around. He didn't have the time to care about someone that was not around, when the issue arises, he would deal with it. For now, his plan was to get stronger.

"I wonder how Reynolds and the others are fairing." Grey muttered.

He came in with Alice, and had seen Klaus. Both were doing relatively fine, although he didn't know how Alice was fairing since they separated, he didn't think she would be doing badly.

Klaus had expectedly broken through to the Elemental Venerable Plane when he saw him. His only regret was not asking Klaus how many stages he had gone through.

Grey stopped thinking about all this and focused on what was in front of him. He started exploring the building, and some moments later, he realized he had to solve a puzzle to get through to the next stage.

There seemed to be different variants of the puzzle, he guessed this had to do with the rewards each person would get. Solving the one that presents itself to you would give you the reward for that particular puzzle. According to what he found out, there were around fifteen puzzles.

Grey didn't think too much about this puzzle, the reason being that it was somewhat linked to the array he learned in the snow world with Klaus. Due to the fact that he learned the array to the smallest detail, he had no issues with these puzzles.

Directly bypassing the array set up for the puzzles, he broke through it within the space of a few minutes.

A golden light appeared on the roof of the building when he was done passing the stage.

Grey raised his head to look at the item, and only after a few seconds did he see it properly. He said slowly, "A beast's core."

This was the first time he was seeing one like this.

Void and the bunny leader looked at the beast's core with envious gazes, they could tell it was the beast core of a top Ranked Magical Beast, at least a Rank Eight Magical Beast.

"Good stuff." Grey flew into the air and grabbed it.

He had used up a lot of essences when he was fighting against the two ladies from the Syphilis and Nether Factions. The moment he touched the beast's core, he felt a powerful and rich amount of essence gush into his body.

He felt all his pores open and became incredibly relaxed. Not just that, but his aura started to climb as well. Before he could control it, he had gotten to the Second stage of the Elemental Venerable Plane.

Grey couldn't help but give a wry smile, he didn't plan on breaking through so early, but it was beyond his control. After the increase in his earth elemental grade and the awakening of his earth domain, he felt he was really close to breaking through to the Second stage.

His aura didn't stop there, it continued climbing, heading for the Third stage.

Grey thought about it and decided against breaking through to the Third stage.

Void and the bunny leader were present, so he decided to share parts of the core with them to stop his breakthrough. He wanted to make sure he didn't break through as hurriedly as he previously did. As he was growing stronger, he started to notice a few things that were wrong with breaking through quickly. First off, his control over his strength was lacking, and compared to old timers, he wasn't as powerful in the same stage.

The reason he had been getting the upper hand when fighting against these people was mainly due to his high explosive attack power. He also had other elements to make up for any issues he would face.

Once he gets used to his strength, he would be able to use an even greater explosive attack that might be well over his cultivation stage. For now, only his physical body could help with that. His fire element had also achieved this feat as well.

Void glared at the bunny leader while he greedily absorbed the essences short at them. He got a larger portion since he was stronger and had been with Grey for so long. The bunny leader got around half the size of what Void got.

The trio absorbed the essence with the rest of their time there.

Some minutes later, they were done with this and it was time to leave.

Grey didn't stay any longer, this was the sixth round he was clearing, and he didn't know how many more rounds he would need to pass through before they could leave this place.

According to what he was told before entering this secret realm, they shouldn't stay more than a month or so. They had been here for a few weeks now, so the sooner he left this place the better for them.

While Grey was heading to the next round, the old man almost fainted.

Grey didn't stay in that round for more than fifteen minutes, and the reason for that was that he was absorbing the essence of the beast's core. One has to know that the beast core had been there for a long time and no one had been able to solve all the puzzles, Grey, on the other hand, did it within a few minutes which was shocking, to say the least.