楼上的上瘾女士

Many were witnesses to Tanya's win. Creten was one of those witnesses and seeing his siblings battling it out in the sky, with mighty intensity with him truly sidelined and having no possible say, left a bad taste in his mouth.

The taste and the feeling only got worse when the outcome became clear with another sibling battle victory for Tanya.

The scream from Nozel was not the type that his devotees, Pietro, and Ergo could ignore and the half Dystopian with multicolored hair took his eyes off Aliya to yell at his master in the sky,

"Your Highness!"

At this point, he had knocked a greatly injured Aliya to the ground, and even though his eyes were no longer on her, he did not worry that she could strike him.

Anyway, in the sky, Tanya brought the gem closer with a wide smile on her face,

"Don't worry brother, I will be wiser than you in my use of the gem. I won't fall for a simple scheme as you have done."

As she spoke, Tanya placed the gem on her forehead, and with her strong mental abilities due to being a Runemaster, she quickly forged a bond with the gem. A bond stronger than the one her brother used to have with it.

The gem did not just sit against her forehead but rather dug in and truly sank into her forehead head where it transported Tanya's mind into the Monument Of Ordinances.

She was seeing out a low angle and a quick look around showed her that she was in someone, her brother Nozel's hand.

Nozel had a look of excitement on his face as he walked and by whirling her eyes forward, Tanya realized the reason was that she, in his hand, was opening up strange paths within the monument.

That was when Tanya realized she was looking through the memories of the gem in her forehead and looking back at the origin of the powers it wielded.

The gem had a strange connection to the Monument having been crafted that way and it was guiding Nozel through the massive warped space within the Monument towards some semblance of a center.

They soon arrived or at least that was what Tanya thought as Nozel stopped moving and mumbled,

"Alright, this is it. Here we go"

The gem had no emotions and its memories seemed more like an impersonal recording. It had sentience but it was still a mechanical sort of sentience.

The following events were pretty straightforward. Tanya watched her brother perform certain seals, as though he were reading off some manual, and strengthen the connection between the gem and the Monument so that the gem could be a passageway for the Monument's powers.

Once that was complete, Nozel formed a bond with the gem and placed it on his forehead after which he let out a yell of struggle and pain.

His yell seemed to hit Tanya's memory snooping perception and she was knocked back to a point just after the destruction of a device.

After the device's destruction and the arrival of the Monument Of Ordinances in a multicolored pillar of light, a gleeful man, Pietro, picked her up off the ground. And by 'her', Tanya already knew this memory snoop, just like the others, was through the gem's perception.

The memory she saw was the moment the gem became separated from the device that used to house it and then become its own being. Sort of.

Tanya then felt pushed and suddenly she was back inside the Monument of Ordinances.

This time, she was not looking out of the gem's perception. She was her own self but in an incorporeal form that seemed to lack any substance.

It only took a second for Tanya to realize that she was not in a memory but rather inside the Monument of Ordinances in real-time. She had used the gem as a channel not only into the power of the Monument but into the Monument itself.

Tanya of course realized that her body was likely stationary in the air and prone to attack but she could not stop herself, her corporeal self, from exploring the Monument a bit. The area she had seen Nozel visit in the gem's memories was an example of a location she had never been to before.

Exploration in the Monument used to be impossible and her inquisitive and creative Runenastering mind could not help but take advantage of an opportunity she used to not have.

The monument was empty and Tanya could feel it moving. Just slightly but she could feel it nonetheless.

"A journey to another world?" she mumbled as per what she had been taught about the Monument hopping from world to world.

And then Tanya heard a voice,

"... Is only getting stronger. The longer we wait, the more powerful he becomes." the voice sounded hasty.

'Who is that?' Tanya thought and then she heard another,

"So what do you suggest? We attack the world, break the rules and spark yet another catastrophe?" the second voice, this one calmer, said.

"We made the rules!" said the first voice.

At this point; Tanya had thrust her head through a wall and saw the one who had spoken was a buff man with a mane of hair of different colors, clad in a chaotic assortment of garments and radiating chaotic energy.

The one he was speaking to, the calmer one, was a monk with a more subtle show of power.

"Not intentionally. It is unfortunate but it is the state of things. Our battle messed things up and stripped us of much of our innate advantages.

Whether we like it or not brother, we are now subject to rules we allowed to exist." the monk said as his chaotic brother did calm down as he said in a gruff voice,

"It would have been so wonderful to storm that world. Nurturing an Avatar to open the way for us is an annoying process.

His Infinity has progressed a step, brother! He is breaking down barriers faster than we can think to build them up."

"So what?" the monk asked.

"What do you mean, so what? At an early stage, he was able to trap us." The chaotic man reminded his brother.

"He trapped Avatars, brother, Avatars.

Impressive? Yes. Worth losing our shit? No. Even if he is allowed to progress with Infinity, there is no evidence that it will surpass us as he claims." the moment he was done speaking, the monk turned his eyes towards Tanya and stared her in the face.

Tanya froze in shock and could not look away even if she wanted.

"A mortal's incorporeal mind." said the monk without any surprise.

He and his chaotic brother, who was also now staring into Tanya's face, did not appear to have been unaware of her presence. It seemed like they had just been too invested in their conversation to care.

"It's from his World too" the chaotic brother noted much to Tanya's confusion but the monk nodded knowingly when his brother mentioned the pronoun 'his'.

Tanya suddenly felt oppressed. This was not oppression due to pressure but rather a fundamental one. The very nature of her existence was at risk and neither of the two she was facing seemed to be the reason in the sense that they did not appear to be straining themselves or purposely oppressing her.

They did not even make a gloatful comment which just went on to show just how insignificant an existence she was to them.

Who were they? Tanya wondered.

Gods?

She could not feel any pressure relating to cultivation but the oppression she was facing had to be at least of the godly sort.

"You've snooped enough, be gone now," said the chaotic brother and his words slammed Tanya's corporal form harder than any attack had ever done.

She was repelled from the Monument and back into her body where her eyes opened to the completion of her bond with the gem.

Tanya found her body shaking as she gained a better understanding of her limits as well as the fact that she was considerably still at the start of the grand journey that was Cultivation progression.

A quick look around and a quick mental calculation told Tanya that all of her incorporeal explorations had barely lasted a second which made sense as things of the mind are not at the same pace as the physical. Plus, the time within the Monument always flowed differently compared to outside it.

Down below, Pietro watched Tanya take possession of the gem just as he felt the augmented power he used to enjoy get drained away.

"Ack!" the groan he let out was sudden just like the hand that had been stabbed through his chest.

The hand belonged to Aliya and Pietro was allowed seconds of life to widen his eyes and feel the augmented power from the gem granted by Tanya to Aliya, which was responsible for how impossible it was for him to defend himself. Especially since he had been distracted.

Aliya had no interest in toying with him and in regards to her vengeance for how he treated her, she delivered it fast and painful.

Ergo was met with the same fate as Ehrlich punched him with a force strong enough to cause his chest to cave in and he was sent backward to be stabbed in the heart by Lena, the maidservant's, sword.

Lena held it out and Ehrlich had the good sense to hit his opponent into the sword and give the lady a taste of defeating one of the intruding bastards.

Nozel, who Tanya was holding up by the back of his robes, could not witness these deaths though as his mind had been scrambled after his forceful separation from the gem and was now unconscious.