King Elbas didn't show any emotion when Noah returned, but his underlings didn't manage to imitate him.
Second Prince smiled when looking at him. He appeared truly happy that Noah was still alive and could find his way back to the group.
Instead, First Prince and First Princess revealed ugly expressions. They didn't like Noah because he was the most promising new powerhouse in the world. Losing him there would have solved many of their future problems.
Noah didn't care about the stares. He had chosen to return because he didn't feel confident in succeeding in the mission without King Elbas' knowledge.
Still, the Royals' leader was the only one who didn't reveal anything, so he wanted to proceed with the mission. There was no point in wasting more time in that hostile environment.
The other powerhouses felt in the same way. They wanted to take care of the last guardian and return to the surface as soon as possible.
"Let's move," King Elbas said. He understood the group's mood, and he wanted to reach raw laws that he could absorb quickly. He was quite better off because his inscribed items were on a superior league, but he didn't like that place any more than his companions.
The days spent walking through an identical scenery returned. The landmass showed some slight differences in its layout, but the group quickly became bored of that too.
The magma's radiations became more intense as they neared the center of the landmass, and resisting the Royal Metal's effects became harder as they advanced.
Their existences wanted to merge with the ground and expand far beyond their limits. The sensation caused by their direct contact with the Metal was so tempting that some powerhouses had to take breaks in the magma from time to time.
That became impossible at some point since their vision shortened further. Even King Elbas couldn't see farther than a dozen meters as the plane's center drew near.
The influence of the Royal Metal began to affect the entire area above the landmass too. Even with simple methods to avoid getting lost, the cultivators couldn't stop feeling that captivating sensation.
The scenery eventually changed. The group had walked for years until they finally reached the center, and the sight amazed them beyond every limit.
The landmass didn't end. It continued past the center toward another secret entrance to the area. Yet, the yellow magma couldn't reach that point. It merely hovered over that spectacular spot.
'What is that?' Noah thought as he gazed at their destination.
The plane's center appeared as a massive rotating sphere with most of its body inside the landmass. Uneven white and dark lights made its structure and flew inside it in a perpetual motion.
They didn't exit the sphere. The lights remained inside its shape and rotated together with the whole structure.
"That's the fifth guardian," King Elbas announced while wearing a stern expression. Even that mighty expert appeared in awe of that mystical object.
The sphere radiated a faint aura, but every bit of its presence seemed to contain an unfathomable power. It was as if it carried the most intense meanings in the world, but they were so indistinct that they barely counted as such.
Noah couldn't understand the nature of the object in front of him. Without the magma's radiations, his consciousness could finally expand freely, but he couldn't analyze the sphere's properties anyway.
His mental waves shattered whenever they tried to probe those rotating lights. Moreover, the vague pieces of information that managed to return to his sea of consciousness didn't make sense.
They felt too deep for anyone to understand them. Noah had seen gods in action and interacted with a few of them, but he believed that even they couldn't study those meanings.
"What am I looking at?" Great Elder Diana asked, but King Elbas could only shake his head.
"I can only give you guesses and hypotheses," King Elbas said. "I've tried everything, but I can't come up with certainties."
"Your hypotheses are enough," Chasing Demon said as he stepped forward to stand next to the Royal.
King Elbas glanced at him before heaving a sigh and explaining what he thought. "Every true meaning has similar features in terms of composition. The intensity can change, but you can't fail to recognize them."
Even True Speed and Elder Paul nodded at that line. They were far more inexperienced than the rest of the group when it came to laws, but no one could mistake them for something else.
"These meanings are different," King Elbas continued. "They exist. We can see them flying in front of us. Yet, they are so faint that they escape even the most subtle mind."
No one could understand where the Royal was going with his speech, but everyone remained silent. They wouldn't approach the sphere without his explanation anyway.
"They seem part of the world," King Elbas continued, "But not of this dimension, not only this one at least. I think they are part of the very fabric of reality. They should be the true meanings of space and time."
King Elbas' revelation startled his companions. It wasn't rare for cultivators to touch on space and time when absorbing laws, but they had never seen them in that state.
"Are the insides of the sphere a separate dimension?" Noah asked, even if he knew that his question was quite naïve.
He couldn't label something created by such laws as a simple separate dimension. That sphere carried meanings far more profound than that, but he didn't know how else to express himself otherwise.
First Prince and First Princess despised his approximation, but they had to admit that there was no other way to describe the area. Even they would have thought about a separate dimension once hearing talks about space and time.
"Yes and no," King Elbas replied. "There is a separate reality inside, and everything in its fabric has raw laws that have yet to gain meaning. I think Heaven and Earth use it as a generator to refill lower planes when they lose too many laws."
King Elbas stepped forward after his explanation ended. He didn't know anything else, but the raw laws were right in front of him. He wanted to go inside the sphere, but he would bring his underling at this time.
The three Royals followed him while wearing excited expressions. They knew that they had to make sure that their Father didn't lose his mind, but they couldn't wait to train too.
Noah and the others also advanced, but a doubt appeared in their minds when they saw King Elbas separating himself from the group together with his underlings.
Their questioning gazes made the Royal speak again. "The insides are strange. The deeper you go, the higher density of raw laws you'll find. I need to make sure that we don't separate, but I won't use my methods on you."
The Royal began to draw red marks on the area's edges on the landmass dug by the sphere. His underlings did the same, and they drew those marks on each other's bodies afterward.
Some of the powerhouses could understand that those marks were simple inscriptions to track each other. Still, they didn't understand why the Royals would need something like that.
The sphere had a radius of two hundred meters. It would be impossible to lose anyone in there now that the yellow magma wasn't a variable.
Yet, the experts didn't think that King Elbas had gone mad, and they began to review his words to see if they had missed some critical information.
'What does he mean by a separate reality?' Noah pondered once he identified the core of the Royal's explanation. He knew what it could mean, but he didn't think that such a thing could exist in a lower plane.
When he reached the edges of the rotating sphere, Noah felt in awe, but his curiosity on the matter made him place himself behind First Princess. He couldn't get those inscriptions, but he wanted to end up in the same place as King Elbas.
The Demons and Elder Julia went behind him and proceeded forward until all the Royals had disappeared inside the sphere. Then, they crossed its edges, and the scenery in front of them changed again.