With a flash of condensed sunlight, the Ascetic began to burn through the earth directly towards where he couldn't see.
0.3 seconds.
That was all the time it took for the Ascetic to break into the marble jade sanctum. Discovering this place, the Ascetic continued to drill further into the earth towards the point he couldn't see.
Not long after this he reached the golden barrier itself, finding it relatively tough to break through, he suspected it would take close to 30 minutes.
At this point, Mathias Calypses had just hit the nine hour mark. There were still nine more hours until he could ascend.
The other Ascetics, hearing the commotion send in squads of clansmen led by elders to investigate the source of the conflict.
15 minutes later, they arrived at the main gate of the complex to find no one there. The only thing remaining was a hole dug out by sunlight. There weren't even any buildings left, the Ascetic had already cancelled out those starlit illusions.
They were shocked and appalled by this, this was a place that was fine yesterday now turned to a barren wasteland. Certain smiling members of these squads then suggested that this could happen to their own villages and they should report back the situation.
The others agreed with this and shortly headed back to their respective villages to report. This was Mathias Calypses' first small win against the Devil's Gamble. The fact that he was able to achieve this pointed to a flaw within the Heavenly Tribulation's power:
It was not capable of convincing others of something if it went directly against their point of being there. There are a lot of ways that logic can be warped yet there are also certain situations where logic cannot be reasonably twisted.
Mathias Calypses aimed for creating as many of these situations as possible. There are a lot of theories sorcerers created about the Devil's Gamble, why it happens, how it works, and what it actually is.
Among the sorcerers of the Lunar world, it is commonly accepted that the Devil's Gamble is a consequence of trying to ascend, trying to become greater than the universe deems you.
There are some who theorize that the Devil's Gamble isn't just time restricted but energy restricted as well. Meaning that there is only a certain amount of metaphysical influence it can exert against an ascender, break that limit and it fails to function.
There are even some crazier individuals who believe that if you can outright deny the Devil's Gamble the ability to influence situations, like Mathias had done, it actually loses its power faster.
Mathias Calypses didn't necessarily believe such a ridiculous notion but he thought it could be true and hence tried it because even if it wasn't true, stalling time still held merit.
The golden barrier shattered under the condensed sunlight,
Bam!
It broke into a gray area filled with countless illusory clones of Mathias Calypses all intertwining aether with each other into a net of starlight.
Reaching this net, the domain amplified sunlight caused it to fracture and break,
BOOM!
The concentrated energy present within the interconnected aether loops all detonated at once into a series of controlled explosions, breaching through the entire subterranean area beneath Hua Tai village in the form of very small tunnels.
These tunnels instantly collapsed upon each other, creating a mass deformity. This caused the collapse of the entirety of Hua Tai village into a gigantic sinkhole.
Inside the top of his wooden pagoda, the attacking Ascetic threw his table to the floor, he was upset that inside the rubble it was nearly impossible for a Solaris cultivator to accurately locate anybody, even if they were a mortal.
Geo is the number one counter to Solaris, even without a Geo sorcerer, this relationship can still be utilized.
What made the Ascetic even madder is that he didn't sense the trap nor the foe. He was certain that somewhere underneath the earth below the former Hua Tai village existed the perpetrator of his clansmen's replacement. He did this by sending sunlight through soil and permeating the earth, the problem with this technique is that it can't run through solid rock well.
In other words, he was certain that the Daoist was within that golden shell and he was right. Mathias Calypses was always within the golden shell.
When stealing aether from a target equal to yourself with no resistance from the other party, there is a one hundred percent success rate and it can happen almost instantly. Normally a sorcerer has to be close to the target in question to perform such an act but by using the unique traits of Astris, a real body double of Mathias Calypses had stolen the remaining aether held by the soul core and all of Mathias Calypses' aether.
Mathias had chosen to wake up an iteration and transfer the aether instead of trying to escape by himself because he had considerable fear that escaping would be detected by the Ascetic breaching in.
Opting to end his life in the explosion, the 314th iteration of Mathias Calypses met his end.
With Mathias' philosophy and methods so detached from the conventional norm, the Ascetic, despite his countless years failed to realize what Mathias had done. This caused him to think in a direction that helped Mathias Calypses' agenda.
This again, was something that went against the Devil's Gamble.
The 315th iteration of Mathias Calypses sat below the earth in an area away from the site of rubble.
He had been there absorbing aether for a little while now, according to his calculations, there were now only 6 full hours until the absorption would be fully completed.
Mathias Calypses himself was fully aware that as time decreases the influence and ridiculousness of the Devil's Gamble increases. The six hour mark was now another benchmark for this.
So he completely understood that things wouldn't be so easy from here on out.
But he also wondered what type of bullshit that the gamble would be on to hurt him now, who could it actually send?
The Devil's Gamble at the level of an Adept ascending to an Ascetic can only influence people up to an Ascetic and even when it does, there must be some underlying logic or reason behind this influence. Although it can pretty much direct anyone Adept and lower without preconditions.
Now calmed down, realizing that it would be impossible for him to find the preparator with Solaris, the Ascetic decided to walk in a specific direction with his true body. Knowing that the enemy was going under heavenly tribulation, planning to just stumble upon them.
Surprisingly, such an stupid and brainless action would eventually hold true.
Although the Ascetic was wrong in one regard, the level of control held by the six hour stage is not yet ridiculous enough to have actually caused the Ascetic's absurd plan to work instantly. He would actually have to wait the one minute stage to instantly stumble upon Mathias with 100% certainty.
But since not everything happens with 100% certainty, the Ascetic had a real chance of finding Mathias Calypses before then, but even still he had to wait at least an hour before his plan had any real chance of success.
During this, Mathias Calypses continued to concentrate fully on absorbing and transforming the aether for another 30 minutes.
Suddenly, he felt like he couldn't breathe!
Mathias, being as astute as he is, instantly grasped the problem. The oxygen supply was cut off somewhere at the top of the cave. Since he examined this small cave before and all its supplies of oxygen he knew that this came from a problem that the gamble seemingly manifested into existence.
This was the main difference the stages have,
At the 12-hour stage low probability events start rapidly appearing where they can.
At the 9-hour stage surrounding people gain a tendency to do things which go against the ascender.
At the 6-hour stage the it gains the ability to force things with 0% chance of occurring. In other words, it creates problems which never existed to begin with. Although it does so sparingly.
At the 3-hour stage it creates these problems rapidly.
At the 2-hour stage it causes the manifestation of the worst thing the ascender believes could impossibly happen. As a consequence, this is the only event that will occur within this stage.
At the 1-hour stage it causes every single concept in the immediate vicinity to go against the ascender, as long as it doesn't affect an Apostle or severely hurt an Ascetic.
In the final 5 minutes the ascender experiences a ninety-nine point nine percent chance of death.
Mathias himself believes the 2-hour and 5 minute stages are most dangerous since they are essentially unlimited. He can name every concept in his immediate vicinity but he can't name nor prepare for every idea in creation. Something necessary to fully counter the 2-hour and five minute stages.