Volume Dragon: Start by obtaining the Infinity Gems

Chapter 329 The Third Gem

"Ding dong."

The moment Nemesis regained consciousness, he found himself standing in a pure white elevator. There were only three buttons for the floors on the elevator panel, and the elevator was currently stopped on the first floor.

"Have I entered the library?" He looked at his hands in confusion. That was his human body, but through the vague reflections around the elevator, he saw that his reflection in the mirror did not have long silver hair, but neat short black hair. The familiar look made him feel as if he had gone back in time.

That was him in the past, before he got bone cancer, the healthy and energetic him.

Nemesis was panicking. He felt that his mana and psychic powers had become silent, as if they had never existed. But how could this be possible? Even in a dead magic area, mages would not lose their power.

"Is this an illusion? Or a dream? No, the Power Stone and the Mind Stone are still responding." Nemesis quickly summed up his situation in his mind. All the extraordinary powers in his body disappeared, as if the past hundred years were all a dream, and he became an ordinary mortal. However, the core that he relied on most since he traveled through time - the Infinity Stones - was still floating quietly in his mind.

Following his inner call, the reflection showed a seven-pointed crown appearing on his head, with two gorgeous gems floating in it that did not exist in this world.

The Infinity Stones still exist, and the power of the mind can be used. Even his physical fitness is more than ten times that of an ordinary person. This proves that this is not an illusion. Even the gods cannot discover the existence of the Infinity Stones. He does not believe that a small library can simulate the power of the Infinity Stones.

The elevator door suddenly opened at this moment, interrupting Nemesis' deep thoughts. He looked at everything outside the door in surprise and walked out slowly.

The space behind the door seems to have compressed the long history of the earth into one building.

The steel dome is covered with vine-like holographic tubes, flashing with blue data streams. The clouds outside the French windows solidify into creamy amber, and raindrops are suspended in the air, each drop of water reflecting the image of a library from a different era.

Medieval parchments fluttered under the Gothic dome, Victorian brass reading lamps coexisted with holographic projection screens, and at this moment the anti-static floor under his feet was exuding the texture of 19th century oak.

Nemesis walked forward slowly, passing through the countless bookshelves. The bookshelves were made of breathing bronze, and the hollow brackets expanded and contracted with the visitor's sight.

Nemesis reached out and touched a metal book numbered T-1945. The gilded title suddenly disintegrated into firefly-like pixels, and gathered in his palm into "The Oral Accounts of the Dead in Hiroshima: The Third Atomic Bomb That Was Not Detonated". As the pages turned, new comments kept seeping out of the yellowed paper, and the ink sometimes looked like dried blood and sometimes like liquid binary code.

The content of the book was extremely strange. The thick book only had two pages of content, and the rest were blank title pages. Nemesis flipped through it casually. The content of the book was like the author was using the perspective of a Japanese who died in a nuclear explosion to vividly describe the flash he saw before his death, the nothingness he felt after his death, and how much he looked forward to the arrival of the third atomic bomb so that more people would accompany him through the underworld of death.

Nemesis put it back on the bookshelf and continued walking forward. There were all kinds of books here, some were normal books that already existed in the outside world, and some were like the previous one, like the epitome of the life of ordinary people - "The Embroiderer Who Suicided - The Work Destroyed by the Loom", "The Agent Who Died Gloriously - Repaying the Favor of the Sun" and other books with extremely strange titles.

The aisle of bronze bookshelves seemed endless, and Nemesis walked for an unknown amount of time. Through the gaps between the bookshelves, he saw that the scene outside the French window had not changed, as if...
Time seems to have stopped here.

After realizing this, Nemesis suddenly felt a sharp pain in his brain. He knelt on the ground and curled up, gritting his teeth to endure the unimaginable pain. A seven-pointed crown appeared on his head, declaring his authority as if he were the master of all things. After the yellow Mind Gem and the purple Power Gem
An orange gem is looming in the illusion, as if it will descend into the world at any time.

“Witnessing a miracle – the cycle of stagnation”

Whether it was the Mind Gem that he had since birth, or the Power Gem that he naturally acquired during his sleep, this third gem was the first time Nemesis had awakened in his waking state, and he had not expected to encounter such torture.

He felt as if his soul was being reshaped by a great force, and countless fragments were torn out by that force, causing him to suffer excruciating pain. But then, countless unknown things merged into his soul, making him feel as desperate and suffocated as if he were being pressed down by an entire planet.

The orange-yellow gem continued to condense its entity during this torture-like process, but just when Nemesis was expecting it to take shape at the last moment, the process he witnessed stopped.

The severe pain slowly receded like the tide, Nemesis lay on the ground gasping for breath, and the seven-pointed crown on his head disappeared.

"What...what's going on? Is it the same as the awakening of the Power Stone? Is the miracle we witnessed not enough?" Nemesis was puzzled. The last time the Power Stone awakened, it was achieved in two steps.

When Selune first displayed her true power, the Power Stone began to move. Afterwards, it truly awakened after Oghma infused a large amount of true power into her body.

Nemesis wondered if the third gem would be the same, but an instinctive intuition told him - no.

What he lacks is not the difference in quantity, but the awakening of cognition.

Unlike the known existence of true divine power, he had no idea what the incarnation of mental power meant by "stagnant reincarnation" in his mind.

Although there were no hints, Nemesis seemed to know it by nature and naturally knew the condition for unlocking the third gem - to understand the meaning of "stagnant reincarnation".

After figuring this out, Nemesis stood up, enduring the severe pain that was still faintly coming from his mind. Although his current physical fitness was ten times stronger than that of an ordinary person, it was as fragile as a piece of tofu compared to his body that could tear apart mountains and fly at supersonic speeds.

He walked slowly forward, holding on to the bookshelf. No matter what, he had to find the sealed Vecna ​​here.

Before, he just wanted to get the holy artifact, but now, he has another reason to go. Perhaps only by finding Vecna ​​can he understand what secrets this library hides and what [Stagnant Reincarnation] represents.

(End of this chapter)