Insulation Lock

Ronan had the Demon Rune firmly under control. The Dark Black Chains held the Demon no differently than they had on any previous occasion. The Demon Rune was obediently restrained; there was no sign of it "rebelling."

The Demon Rune was still the Demon Rune, yet the waves of "heat" rising from it were undeniably real. Ronan now knew they were a raging storm of emotions and desires, one that utterly dwarfed the Stone Forest Lava Lake at the Abyss Zone Blood Soul Temple. It was larger, more turbulent, more extreme...

That was why Ronan thought of it as an ocean ravaged by hurricanes.

One fact was clear: this power came from the Demon Rune, from its chaotic, disorderly Original Body. Ronan had simply never understood it before—and it was not something reason could understand. Trying to grasp emotions and desires through reason was like speaking two different languages. He would never have felt their power that way.

Cloud Top World and Local Time-Space were separated by only a thin, murky membrane of Spacetime, yet it was enough to keep tens of billions of people around the globe from seeing it. In a sense, the Abyss Zone and the physical world were also mingled together, but the gulf between mind and matter kept them from disturbing each other.

Now Ronan had felt the searing force of emotions and desires firsthand and knew how to interpret it. The membrane had been pierced, and power from another "dimension" truly flowed through.

That flow of power—the steadily rising "heat" in the Dark Black Chains—raised a more fundamental question for Ronan: if the Dark Black Chains had the Demon Rune under control, why couldn't they control the power inside it?

There seemed to be some difference between the Demon Rune and "the Demon Rune's