Before he could start questioning why he had been chosen to gain the World Crystal's abilities, more memories started coming in. These memories showed the real start of his journey to power.

  In his journey through space, he had taken a long time to climb in power but had still been able to increase from Low C Rank to Mid C Rank. However, Dan knew that the higher his power got, the longer it would take for his Chaos Mana to bump him to the next level. What he needed was to consume other Heart Crystals, and the only way to do that was to encounter more aberrations. And as it turned out, Eldritch Gods and their destruction of planets weren’t the only way for aberrations to form.

  If a soul was taken out into the Astral and left to be corrupted by Chaos Mana, the end result would often be the formation of a new aberration. This meant that worlds whose residents managed to head out into the Astral in search of the wider universe would undoubtedly face issues, and the souls of those explorers would end up as aberrations.

  Now, Dan did not doubt that there were also space wars out there whose participants, more often than not, ended as aberrations. Much like him, these aberrations were low on the power rankings and would set out into the universe in search of power. And just like him, they would run into a world untouched by Eldritch Gods. In fact, it wasn’t long after arriving outside of another living world that other aberrations assaulted him.

  These aberrations were on the weaker end, and their minds weren’t necessarily all there. They were weak blobs of flesh and tentacles no doubt made from the weakest of souls, and as such, Dan had quickly dispatched them, taking their Heart Crystals.

  The sight of the aberrations made Dan finally scan himself, finding that he was some sort of octopien subspecies, not that it did much for him as it was a form he disliked.

  He was humanoid in appearance, with tentacles sprouting from his chin. Unlike the ones he had seen on Earth, he had muted facial features with green-red orbs for eyes and a very flat, almost non-existent nose attached to his roundish octopus head. His hands were tentacles that sprouted from where his elbows were, and his legs ended at his knees, with thicker tentacles sprouting from there. Dan had changed a lot, but one thing that had yet to change from when he was human was his odd desire for companionship. He didn’t need companions, as his track through space showed, but it was more of a luxury he still wanted to partake in. So, seeing as he had a planet with life in front of him, he made his way down.

  Dan was still a C ranked nobody in the cosmos, but due to his rank, entering the planet still took a couple of months. Eventually, he pierced through the planet's Ethereal Barrier and slowly floated down.

  The planet was rocky, with minimal greenery and a decent amount of ocean. Overall, it was a combination of mountains, deserts, bare plains, and the odd forest here and there. Unsurprisingly, the most civilized locations were near the greens, which were located at the center of each of the three large, almost interconnected continents.

  Dan decided not to head there, at least not right away. He was unsure of how long the planet had been around and didn’t want to run into natives who might be stronger than him.

  Making his way to a much more empty part of the planet, Dan traveled for days before encountering a small village hidden by a stone overpass. The village was made of squared stone buildings and was closely built around a tunnel that had to be an entrance to a mine. The villagers were elves, dwarfs, and humans, except entirely made of stone as if they were statues come to life. Worried about scaring the hell out of the villagers, Dan had opted to control the minds of some stone birds whose very existence meant they shouldn’t be able to fly. However, on closer inspection, Dan found they used gravity magic to levitate across the land.

  Hiding among the other rocky and oddly shaped hills, Dan used the birds to spy on the village and was happy to find that there didn’t seem to be anyone there who was truly strong.

  With the confirmation that he was the strongest thing around, Dan approached the village in the dead of night, thankful that the planet had no moon. Once at the village, the first thing Dan needed to find out was if the villagers were susceptible to mind magic. Unlike the birds, which had a fleshy interior with a brain, all the villagers might be golems.

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  Dan was happy to find that the villagers had brains, but not exactly how he had been expecting. Their brains were effectively rocks in their heads that did what brains did, except they were rocks. Still, it meant he could control them or at least make a few things more easily acceptable.

  With ease, Dan nudged the villagers to accept his illusion, which made him look like a human, even to their touch—the illusion was not exactly like them, but just an average human from Earth. Dan’s idea was to pull the isekai trope of someone who had just been taken to a different world. He wanted to see how the villagers would respond. It was also the best way for him to ask questions without seeming out of place. Of course, Dan could just mind-control them, but he still felt a bit odd about the idea at the time.

  Dan's idea worked, and he quickly learned that nothing on the planet had outer flesh. Everything and anything had a layer of rock or something else coating it. It was very bizarre, and Dan didn't believe them at all until he confirmed it with his own eyes and spatial sense.

  While in the village, Dan learned a few other things while talking to the villagers. Yes, he talked since he actually had a very thin, almost unnoticeable mouth right where a mustache would be.

  He learned that all villagers had rough, gravel-like voices, no matter their apparent gender. Additionally, they didn't have genders. Even though some looked female and others looked male, they were rock people and did not reproduce like Dan was used to. Thankfully, due to his act as another worldly creature, they were happy to explain that they used special rocks. Using one of these rocks, they combine two pieces of each of the parent's rocky material. Then, after some magic stuff, a mini rock person would form. Needless to say, Dan had been pretty amazed.

  The last two pieces of information the villagers gave him were the answer to why the world barely had any green on it, along with directions where he could find out more about the world's history.

  Apparently, the world's oceans were acidic. At least the first layers of the ocean were, which caused the land to be assaulted by acidic winds and storms coming from the coasts. These storms were why the green areas were at the center and thickest part of the continents, where the acid winds and storms couldn’t reach. Dan had questioned whether it rained acid and found that it did not rain acid. The storms that brought the acid water strictly came from the ocean and, much like hurricanes, dispersed when they reached too far into land, only leaving the winds, which crashed against the mounds of rocks, hills, and mountains.

  In terms of the actual water cycle, well, that actually magically removed the acid, and it rained normal water, but since there was a constant breeze of acid flowing, all plants on the surface without protection were wiped out.

  The acid winds also answered the question of why supposedly all living beings had a rock layer. If they really dealt with acidic winds and storms, the planet's denizens would need some protection from them. And it turns out their stone skins were resistant to the acid, much like the deeper layers of the hills, mountains, and, by extension, their planet's deeper layers. Dan supposed there might be actual plants down below, though it was still weird that the plants didn’t have natural protection against the acid.

  Finding himself spiraling, Dan stopped himself before further questioning reality's workings and instead pondered what the acid meant for him.

  It meant he would have to use kinetic shields to avoid being completely eroded, if that was even possible since the regenerative powers of aberrations were rather impressive. Still, Dan was glad he gained the information the easy way instead of learning about the acid winds when a storm hit him. Thankfully, he was far from shore, and the wind had been almost nonexistent when he landed.

  Either way, Dan still wanted to make the planet his temporary home; he had already encountered some aberrations while entering and imagined there would definitely be some on the planet he could hunt down. However, before he could do anything, he had to ensure he was relatively safe, so he needed more information. Thus, he asked the villagers to point him toward the nearest city where he could find more about the world than the information some backwater village in the middle of nowhere could offer him.

  Unsurprisingly, the directions to the city led him directly to the tunnel the village was built near. The tunnel connected to an underground cave system, giving access to the places where people lived underground. That piece of information did make Dan question why the village existed above ground at all.

  He eventually learned in the city that the above-ground villages were established to gather minerals created by the acid brought through the acid storms and winds. Apparently, the minerals were good for alchemy due to their acidic nature, which made Dan lose complete interest in the topic.