Ronan smiled. There was no emotion in it, yet it was the most mentally and physically taxing smile of his life.
He had exploited the damaged logic of the Starry Sky Remnant Game, using the Dream Entry Method and illusion to place himself at the position of the Myriad Heavens Gods for that instant and experience it firsthand.
And what had it cost him?
The two rounds of "What is Sought" through the Cloak app had caused worldwide Mental Pollution by drawing on the Dream God Abomination's power. Ronan had always used the conservative Self-Pruning Art to control the pollution's extent and scale, effectively saving it for a rainy day. But when he manifested his version of the Death Announcer Bird earlier, he had used the Service Demon Scroll to expend it all at once. That was how he had been able to wield the Dream Entry Method and illusion so smoothly.
For that glimpse from the sparse stars of deep space, he had also employed a little of the Rift Demon Eye's technique. It was his reconstruction of how the gods and Great Monarchs who had fallen since the Calamity Era, along with the remnants of their rules and consciousness, had struggled desperately in the bottomless Abyss of the Fog Maze before gradually being worn away. It was a dangerous method. He had to approach the danger before his enemy and accept the pollution himself. Use it too often, and some filthy, despairing remnant of a Divine Cloak might drag him down—or a growing Divine Sin might devour him.
Ronan had only used it before to frighten Mora, and that had been in the Dream World. In truth, he was drawing on the power of Karmic Poison Contamination and God Rule Fragments to forcibly sustain the corresponding level of