The Primordial Record

Death came in various forms, some spectacular like having a meteorite crash directly onto your forehead, or pretty mundane like dying of old age surrounded by old enemies and memories of dead friends but Rowan's death was pretty anticlimactic.

His seemingly impervious rocky shell was crushed to pieces in seconds, denied any of the powers of his dimensional flesh or his myriad of impossible abilities, he was nothing but an extra dense piece of dirt with a passable consciousness power that could not even manipulate a single grain of sand inside this place, except fight for the chance to understand an alien higher-order language.

Rowan could imagine the forms it would take when he died, he could count hundreds of perpetrators at the top of his head that were gunning for his head and even had a short list of the top ten individuals that could most likely be the cause of his eventual demise.

What just happened went a long way to show how nothing in life could ever be predicted, especially in this new reality he found himself.

Of all the dangers that he had faced after his transmigration, from the Primordial Keepers, Lamia, the gods of Trion, Demons, Archmages, Tyrants from lost Epochs, even the Reflections of a damned Primordial, Rowan had never once believed that his death would come at the mouth of a faceless lump of flesh.

It could be regarded as a straightforward death, devoid of all the machinations that were usually involved when it came to murdering a sapient creature, simply devouring and eating, but the effects it had on Rowan were anything but simple.

After surviving impossible odds for so long, Rowan had forged a nearly unshakable belief in his near omnipotence. How could he not?

Time after time, reality had proven to him that he played on a stage that was so above everyone else in scope that the differences between him and the greatest geniuses he had ever seen could be compared to the difference between a god and an ant.

He might have started life as a base mortal after his transmigration, but the Primordial Record had given him the chance to continually evolve and reach higher levels of power that he had leapfrogged distances that were considered impossible to contemplate.

Consider that one of the greatest geniuses to ever exist in creation could use maybe a thousand years to complete a single shard of the Supreme Circle, but with Rowan's present height, he had completed the entire Supreme Circle that held what could be considered an infinite amount of shards in less than seven hundred years.

In other words, the greatest genuine to ever live would have to use an infinite amount of time to achieve the same thing, and that was simply saying it was impossible for them to ever do it. Rowan had taken seven centuries to achieve the impossible.

There was no reason to believe that any challenges he would ever face, would ever stump him for long. What would most likely be impossible for anyone else, for him, it would just be difficult. He had earned this right after achieving the impossible, again and again, and again.

Every move he had made as he ascended the path of power was to forge himself into a being that was infallible, he had no choice in this matter because Rowan needed to be infallible if he was to fight against the sort of enemies that he was facing and the challenges before him.

Heavy is the head who wears the crown.

His bloodline of Sheol and the lack of a Soul had given him a carte blanche attitude towards the concept of death, and for a long while, he had forgotten what it felt like to have the crippling fear of your impending demise and the knowledge that one day your soul and everything you have strived to develop would be gone.

His death made something that Rowan thought he had understood but had not entirely come into full agreement with come to light and he could no longer deny the reality of his situation. Yes, he was indestructible, truly indestructible, but it was only up to a certain level. Under the ninth Supreme Circle, no matter how much he suppressed himself or the caliber of opponents against him, he was untouchable, nothing could rock his consciousness.

If Rowan was to fight alone against the entire might of every third-dimensional universe in reality, he would win. There was no contest, no timeline or altered reality where he would ever lose such a battle. In his power level, no one could ever achieve the same thing.

This situation changes when he began encountering the powers of higher dimensions and their mysterious capabilities that challenged all his ingrained belief of his omnipotence.

Old Man Seed had warned him about meeting his equals and Rowan had acknowledged that warning, but a part of him had also disregarded it, after all, he had no equal.

The powers that a higher dimension controlled begged to differ.

Rowan after much deduction and placing all the abilities he controlled in line, he inferred that he could challenge the Will Holders of the Fourth Dimension, easily kill the weak ones and fight to a draw with the strong for a while before his endless might overwhelms them.

He could battle against the Will Holders of the Fifth dimension without winning, but they could never kill him, and possibly survive the attacks of the Sixth dimensional Will Holders, but it might be a close thing to avoid destruction, but the Doom Star was stranger than all of that.

It was a power at the eight-dimensional level that was approaching the domain of ninth. What sort of capabilities would it hold and how could it influence him?

The answer was now clear, all his vaunted invincibility was useless, with all his potential he was judged to be nothing but dirt, perhaps a bigger dirt, big enough to crush an entire continent, but in the grand scheme of things… nothing but dirt.

"Is that what you are trying to teach me about Nemesis?"

Rowan muttered groggily as he began to lose lifespan as the resurrection process began. It was the first time since he had been transmigrated into Trion that he had to use this ability, and he had hoped to complete his journey to the top without experimenting with it. But as it appears, some understanding requires harsh lessons.

𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗢𝗦: Eternal and Endless, Death is a footnote you have conquered eons ago, rapidly healing from all physical damage. If death still finds you, consume lifespan to be reborn.

The experience of losing lifespan was both strange and horrifying. Like his death, it was something he had never experienced before, and it touched him in a manner that defied meaning. It was not the pain, although it hurt a lot, it was the loss of something that he felt he could never replace.

There was no counter to indicate how much lifespan he had lost, but he could feel it. He knew when he lost a million years of life, and the counter did not stop draining him, the number running ever upwards as his lifespan drained into an abyss that seemed never to be full.