James met countless beauties, while the woman in front of him could be considered one of the top, she still paled in comparison to the top 3 which he had met. Even so, she exuded a rather unique aura.

While all sorts of thoughts passed through his head, James calmly deactivated the defensive spells and skills.

“Sorry about that, you startled me”

The girl relaxed slightly, the previous force threw her back several meters with ease. But she could tell there really was no malice or ill intent. Even so, she still kept up her guard.

“Who are you and why are you unaffected by the barrier”

James searched through the memories of his physical body, since he had no recollection of ever hitting any kind of barrier and he was in a state where his mind was partially disconnected from his body.

“Mh, I am.. I go by James, James Miller. As for the barrier you mentioned. It was too weak for me to notice, besides the rune formation of that barrier originated from me, so it doesn’t affect me in the slightest”

Her brow creased every so slightly, grabbing one of the daggers she asked.

“Explain without lies, or die painfully”

James scratched his cheek. He couldn’t tell if she had short term memory issues or was plain dumb. From the previous exchange alone it would have been excruciatingly clear how she couldn’t even harm him.

“Firsty, you can’t kill me, secondly you can’t harm me, thirdly when asking for a person's name, at the very least you should introduce yourself as well, Miss Yuehai Nicht”

At his last words Yuehai became alarmed and without much thought, dashed in for the kill.

At the moment, James was still in a largely suppressed state in all fields. He released a few of his senses, just a few percentages of his complete enhanced senses. His perception of time and space greatly sped up, to the point Yuehai looked as if she was standing completely still. Every single change was clearly visible as his eyes were now able to perceive a full 360° around him and could see things crystal clear. If what he would see was 144px then he could now see in 8k HD quality. Due to the partial release of the suppressions, his original procession speed was also partially regained, speeding up his thoughts from the average genius to high speed computer. In all honesty, even without all his skills, magic and passive abilities, just a part of his true senses are capable of making a normal human undefeatable in the realm of Gods.

After leisurely taking his time to make a choice, he decided to take a slightly different approach than usual. For airheads and straightforward people like Yuehai, showing the absolute difference in strength would be the best way to deal with things. Simply taking the attack head on and not receive any damage wasn’t enough. Anyone with high endurance could do that. Instead, he would best her in what Vampires were the most prideful in, their regenerative abilities that are said to be unparalleled.

After making this decision, he started to suppress his senses once again, at the same time he started to suppress his skin's toughness and weakened it considerably, to the point it became like a normal human skin.

While limiting himself, he also was casting multiple enchantments on Yuehai and slightly altering her psyche using pure mana so she didn’t notice the abnormality.

Many would say he was doing far too much for a single act. But one shouldn’t forget James is a genius among geniuses, a person who acts based on complete rational and logical decisions. At the same time he was a sociopath, resulting in mental conflicts, while his decisions were logical, they were not objective, but instead partially subjective. However, as a freak of a genius and a perfectionist who would easily spend a thousand years just to perfectly master multiple occupations, he would always make sure everything was completely perfect. In fact the extent at which he was manipulating the scene was low on James’ standards.

Once he was done with preparations, James once again, suppressed all his senses, returning his perception of time and space back to normal. Moments later the sharp blade imbued with concentrated magic hit his chest.

Even with his natural body endurance being lowered to that of a normal human, under normal circumstances, it still wouldn’t be enough for a normal metal blade to pierce his skin. This was because of the tyrannical amount of mana compressed within his body.

The dagger cleanly cut apart James’ flesh, cleaving through his heart. Blood spattered everywhere. Then, right before Yuehai’s eyes, she saw the impossible, with her dagger still pierced in James’ heart and veins, the wounds started mending. The cut flesh closed, the gaping hole in the aorta and heart was long gone, under James regenerative ability, the dagger was simply pushed out as the last trace of any scratch vanished.

While staring at Yuehai, James had a thought. A rather simplistic thought.

He currently had two problems, he still had to learn ‘emotion and humanity’ and also find a purpose in life, or find someone or somewhere he could settle down for now and make ties with.

Long, long ago, before he went into seclusion, there was a time he had thought to keep someone close in order to develop his ‘humanity’. After all, he knew about the peculiar emotion called love which drove many people both to their happiest moments of their life as well as to their death. It was the most unpredictable emotion, and one that was in the most basic of human nature.

During the short timeframe of after he had the thought and before he went into seclusion, he had seen and met several women, with not one causing a single change within him. To him, they were simply other people, a collection of particles, blood, bones, flesh that was alive. The same was true for the girl in front of him. Now, he thought it would be best to change his approach, instead of simply relying on something ridiculous and irrational as love at first sight, he could just stay near people, observe them, try to understand them without using any of his skills. And like this, understand from their actions and behaviour.

For James to experience emotions was already deemed impossible by him, so he would try and understand by watching others.

As such, James saw it as an opportunity, a place he could trust, uncorrupted, and people he could observe.

“As I said, I am the origin, with your instinct and sensitivity as a vampire, you should know fully well the only reason you managed to cut me was because I allowed and made it possible”

A myriad of emotions passed through Yuehai in a fraction of a second. Due to her innate high sensitivity she could confirm every word he said was true. This caused her to feel fear, respect, and awe.

James nodded, indeed, as an airhead her emotions are practically written all over her face, it would take only a few weeks to observe all possible kinds of sentiments and decipher them.

“Now, you can skip the introductions for now. Your settlement is currently infected with a disease is it not?”

Without further ado, James simply lifted her up using the ambient mana and flew at a relaxed pace towards a seemingly random direction. For Yuehai however, this ‘relaxed’ pace was practically bordering at the speed of sound. Within just a fraction of a second James already came to a stop.

The settlement, around the size of a town, was contaminated with the smell of rotten flesh. An air of depression hung in the atmosphere.

“I know because if I wanted, there is nothing I don’t know. Don’t worry I’ll make another barrier formation later on”

James paused for a bit.

“Yes, however while I do have several mind reading skills, I don’t use them, you should see your own face, I can read every single thought you have without even needing to think”

As James talked, he stared down at the settlement.

Unlike most dignified vampire settlements, it was shabby, worn down.

During this short time period Yuehai used her utmost concentration to keep a straight face.

After examining the current situation with his own eyes. James merely sighed.

“Solved. The disease was caused by a venomous snake called emperor heaven snake. It isn’t a species known by humans, the gods named it. It’s poison is potent enough to instill fear for weaker gods, it isn’t the poison which caused your misfortune, but its death. While it has such powerful poison, the physical body of the snake itself is weak, so weak that even if a human child stepped on it, it would die. Unlike normal emperor heaven snakes however, the air was contaminated by its poison, mixed with the unique aura of vampires it became a disease incurable by anything which vampires touch”

James left, drifting away at human speeds. ‘History repeats itself, how interesting. Perhaps I should properly study Fate, it isn't energy or law, otherwise I would have definitely found it and studied it further, what is it?’

James pondered while drifting away, he once again entered a trance where he would simply wander aimlessly until he left this trance.

He also pondered whether or not to use Ruler to find out, but decided against it. Just the mere activation of the skill would cause the spatial laws of the universe to collapse resulting in complete destruction of the universe. Even at his current strength, to fully turn back time of an entire universe would drain him as good as all his mental energy. Temporal laws are far more intricate than spatial laws. To turn back time meant going against the very essence of these laws. Even turning back a single microsecond would be impossible for any high tier god.

If it were only a small area, it would be childsplay for James. But turning back the time of the entire universe… Turning back time meant restoring and destroying what was gone and what was made. Depending on what happened, the energy required to turn back time would change as well. What he needed to do was not just turn back time to an area larger than what any human could imagine. It would also need him to restore the powers and energies of all which existed within, all of the gods, planets, stars, humans, beasts, everything.

At that point, even if there was no backlash due to Ruler’s immunity, the only thing Ruler was unable to directly influence was his mental energy, he could speed up the recovery and increase it, but he couldn’t simply give an Order to restore it immediately.

To be unable to use mental energy for a period of time, an hour at most, meant he couldn’t use any skills or magic. This meant he would be, completely vulnerable. Just to satisfy his curiosity, he wouldn’t put himself at risk to malicious gods. During the short period of time, he would have the strength of a mid ranking god, and there were plenty of evil gods aiming for his life.

“C-Could you stay a while longer?”

For the second time, James was forcefully withdrawn from his trance, both by the same person.

Regaining his bearing, he nodded. He had already decided to stay in the settlement for some time after all.

At the same time, he revealed a rare smile, a forced one, but it was an attempt to emulate emotion.

“You can have the honor of witnessing me relocating my lab”

James held out his hands instead of using his mind to move the space.

The entire plain beneath them started to tremble, within seconds, the very space itself started to tear.

Although Yuehai couldn’t understand what was happening, she could feel an enormous and sinister aura leaking from the tears in space. The moment she stepped inside… she didn’t dare imagine it.

Using her racial abilities to sense what was happening, to her astonishment she found the entire earth beneath them was being reconstructed.

Originally, if James wanted to move his laboratorium, he could simply pull the entire building through a spatial rift and place it here. Instead he decided to be on the passive side and deconstruct and reconstruct it here. This process, which would take perhaps less than a millionth of a second for James, he purposely delayed it to a full 10 seconds.

After a short while, a crystal-like palace appeared in front of the duo. It was a rather small palace, but it was artistically constructed. This was the tiny, incomparably insignificant and small above ground section of the laboratorium which only served as a disguise.

Without further ado, James walked towards the entrance.

“I welcome you, to my… laboratorium”