Originally, Rio could not use ’Destiny Manipulation,’ but after he borrowed the power from Lia and practiced it for a while, he managed to get some inspiration from it.

Finally, when fighting Raika, he fully awakened to the power and became capable of watching and manipulating the very strings of destiny.

Although his control over this power wasn’t as refined and as overwhelmingly strong as Lia’s, it was enough for now.

Other attacks could not land on Raika because he was just a mental manifestation of the consciousness of the legendary artifact ’The Crown of Endless Realms.’

But an attack made through the very strings of destiny will still land on Raika, as even the most powerful beings and artifacts in the universe still have strings of destiny attached to their bodies.

With this power, Rio had become capable of completely ignoring most defenses and attacking almost anyone.

But of course, Rio and Lia both knew that using the strings of destiny as an attack method was not a conventional and good idea.

The two of them can sever threads of destiny and even break them, but creating new threads of destiny is impossible.

Creating new threads of destiny would be like creating new destinies and paths for an individual, and doing something like that would require so much power and assistance from the laws of the universe that it’s almost impossible for even a peak SS-ranker to do something like that.

In other words, destiny manipulation is the type of power that can be used to attack, but its effects can’t be reversed easily by either Rio or Lia.

Thus, using such a power in all aspects is not ideal.

...

"The Crown of Endless Realms possesses an ability that lets it teleport its user to any location in the universe using the power of the ’law’ of ’space’..."

"But it didn’t have the ability to independently locate any universe coordinates by itself; its user would have to find coordinates to travel to on their own..."

"As a self-conscious entity, I refused to have a master and finding the exact coordinates of the various planets that once existed in the past was near impossible even for me..."

"But Aino Felicia could do it... so..."

Raika hesitated to speak further, but after being glared at by Rio’s cold, emotionless eyes, he could only grit his teeth and spill out the truth honestly. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"I trapped her in my realms, then slowly absorbed her existence into myself using the ’laws’ from the artificial realms, fully absorbing her power..."

"I wanted to find the exact coordinates of planet Cyria-229, the dwarven planet that where I was created with the help of the people from my mother planet..."

Hearing those words, Rio was speechless and could only lament to himself that he was late.

’I should have come to the Beast Archipelago much earlier than this... that way, I could have found Aino Felicia when she was still alive...’

Raika had killed Aino Felicia and had absorbed her unique powers into himself; it was an unfortunate incident that could have been avoided if Rio had arrived on time to stop it.

’Well, the crown cannot be wielded by anyone that below rank SS due to its overwhelming power; even I would have only been able to use the crown for only a few minutes before I would have to put it away...’

’That’s why I wanted to wait until I reached rank SS to come get this crown but it seems things have deviated too far from the original plotline... sigh...’

Originally, the crown should have been sealed inside a powerful hidden seal located on Island Maria of the Beast Archipelago.

The island was a heavily armed fortress of the beast nation’s military and was shrouded in ancient mysterious phenomena.

Aino Felicia was stationed on that island as the general in command, and with her unique abilities, she was a valuable asset to not only just the military of the Beast Archipelago but also the entire awakener’s association itself.

Beast folk stationed in the fortress were aware that something ancient was sealed beneath the island, but they all had no idea what it was, as they had strict orders to not interfere with the seal.

"Who brought you out of the seal? When did you gain self-consciousness?"

These two questions had been bugging Rio since the moment he found out about Raika’s true identity.

Rio knew full well that even after gaining a full consciousness of its own existence, the crown couldn’t have made it out of the seal all by itself and would have needed someone to bring it out willingly.

The seal cast on it was extremely powerful, as it was created by none other than King Allen von Reinhart himself.

The crown of endless realms was already highly influenced by the law of miasmic corruption when it was used by a previous demon king to ambush King Allen during the thousand-year war.

This crown was the main reason why the demon, the shadow dragons, and all the other enemies were able to lay an ambush on King Allen, as it was used by the demon king to teleport forces right to King Allen’s doorstep!

In that battle of betrayal, King Allen Von Reinhart was almost killed, the Demon King was erased from existence, the shadow dragons were banished to the spirit realm, and hundreds of other powerful enemies were wiped out.

And the crown was sealed away beneath Island Maria, which used to be a barren, undiscovered island located far apart from most of the other islands of the Beast Archipelago.

Once the thousand-year war came to an end, the beast folk created a powerful fortress atop the island to keep an eye on the seal and protect it from any intruders who might try to break it.

The crown was indeed a powerful artifact, but it was highly corrupted and heavily influenced by miasmic corruption, so it was almost unusable for anyone but the servants of miasma.

That’s why it was never used by King Allen himself either, and even Fade treated it as a last resort method to escape when things got extremely dire.

His heavenly luck gave him immense resistance to miasmic corruption; thus, he wasn’t corrupted despite carrying the crown around with him in his space ring.