The pressure of the dark and hot atmosphere around me makes it feel like thousands of hot molten blades stab into my flesh, and gravity crushes every cell individually until the pain receptors stop sending me signals.
My whole body goes numb.
The energy wave that collides with my core is met with equal force on impact, as I’ve focused all of my energy into a single point.
Maria’s in a similar state, and still connected together, we’re sent flying backward at an absurd speed.
Large amounts of our soul armor are shattered off and fall below us.
We are sent flying above the crack in the pyramid, so my ether senses watch the armor we worked so hard to collect fall into a darkness further away than I can see.
Dense corruption spreads throughout my body again to try and regain control of my limbs, but as I do this, the Demon’s words echo in my mind.
“You killed my only two interesting guardians, and now you’re trying to escape? The resources in the Lower Realm have almost gone dry… I don’t think I’ve seen a single new Noble show up in the last few millennia.”
The Demon disappears and reappears in our flight path on the other side of the massive crack.
A blue glow is spreading through Maria’s body too, but neither of us have enough strength to shift our direction in time.
I only sift through my memories faster to try and see if there is any valuable information in the lives of those two High Nobles.
The Demon lets go of its dagger, and it floats up to its assortment of weapons. In exchange, it grabs a long cyan curved blade. Its core shines bright white with Celestial Energy, but its outer edges are almost entirely made of divine threads.
The flash of white makes a memory surface in my mind.
It is of a day the two guardians were waiting on this tower, and an exceptionally fast and strong Noble Demon challenged them. Instead of attacking head-on, it took to the skies and used a long-range soul weapon that looked similar to a boomerang.
The two handled the Demon in just a few minutes, but they did chase it through the sky quite high.
A faint glow of white light high above resurfaces in my vision.
The moment I recall this memory, more and more like it start to appear.
Not just from that Demon, but from the fragmented minds of the tens of thousands of Demons I killed before. Every time one of them would fly on their dragons, high in the sky, trying to escape this nightmare of a ravine; often they would see the same white glow.
Sifting through them randomly, it just looks like a random nonsense Celestial Energy reading, but now as they all align in my mind, it takes a shape I can recognize.
It looks like some kind of long white crack in space…
My eyes shift upward the moment they get enough corruption channeled in them to move, and Maria feels where my attention lies.
We focus all of our energy into our feet, and try to change course upward, but it’s too late…
The Demon’s curved blade comes falling down toward us.
We could compress our defenses again, and probably survive it. But, we would only be blown back in the same fashion, and have less energy to try anything else.
Maria feels my determination and sees that I’m not defending, and follows my lead.
Her explosion of ice through her feet is more powerful than the corruption I manage to summon, as I’m using a large amount to expand my perception.
As we’re blasted upward, the sharp cyan and white curved blade collides with my sword-wielding arm, and slices through it without any resistance.
The last feeling I have in the arm is of myself gripping the red blade, and letting it fall back into my soul.
My whole left arm, including all of the armor left on it, falls below us, down into the dark crack.
I don’t even feel it.
My only focus is above us, and the sound of a Demon’s laughter in my mind as it’s amused by our stunt.
“Oh, you’re no fun at all… Putting away your sword before I can see it awaken. I guess I can dig through your soul once you’re dead anyway… there’s no rush in handing it over.”
It puts away its curved blade, then grabs a dark black axe.
The Demon disappears, and reappears right in front of us…
However, instead of attacking again, it just swings the axe around in its hand in a playful manner. The Demon kicks off the ground slowly, matching our speed, and flying up in the air at exactly the same rate. Its deep purple eyes stare at our legs, then up toward the darkness we travel into.
“Now how would you know about that…? I’ve been watching the two of you since you made it to that first artifact pedestal, and you have never flown high enough into the sky.”
When it looks back down toward us, its gaze falls directly on me.
“You know… but she doesn’t. Who? Oh- That’s where I recognized your aura from. Could this be the work of that Immortal Dragon? The Fallen One? You know how many times I killed his Demons back when this Ravine used to be exciting?”
The Demon laughs, and my eyes widen at his words.
“That control freak would never go somewhere without being certain of the outcome. Your soul bonds are far too diluted and twisted together for this to be entirely his doing… but you have definitely met him…”
The Demon tightens its gaze on me, then relaxes to look over at its axe, then back toward our legs as we both step upward through the air. We are clearing almost a full kilometer with every second that passes.
A light glint of white light opens up in the darkness above us, and the Demon nods, then swings its dark black axe our way.
It is far too fast to even see, all I feel is our momentum slow.
We can no longer step through the air.
Four legs fall down into the darkness below, with shards of soul armor fragments filling the red and blue essence flooding out of them.
The Demon appears on our opposite side, following through with its weapon’s slash.
“I’ll give you one hit each. If you really think you can make it out, who am I to stop you from trying.”
It laughs even louder while the white glow above grows, and it swaps out the black axe for a deep purple-colored spiked club.
The Demon holds it resting over his shoulder, keeping its interested eyes on Maria’s soul weapon as she starts charging it up with all her power.
Her core contracts and pulses outward three times, and her gaze watches the light above us finally reveal itself.
An enormous rift in space covers the sky.
Turning our heads back and forth, it looks like it goes on endlessly in all directions, and splinters off into many paths. Up close, it looks like it mirrors the layout of the ravine’s spiderweb-like paths. Above the center of all the Ravine’s pathways, there is an identical rift that leads somewhere.
It makes me remember the meeting the two High Nobles had with Lucian, and how they were all dropped down into this network of caves and passageways. Even our own arrival to this place, somehow we fell through this rift.
Looking up at it now, I can tell it’s made of an ether-based Energy. Behind it, there are swirling cyan threads that look just like the strange energy fields we flew through to get here from the green zone. However, the white glow that surrounds it gives off an aura like nothing I’ve ever seen before…
I grit my teeth and let the tendrils of corruption I was using to propel myself upward instead flow into my lost arm. They flood out of my shoulder and create a pseudo energy form, strong enough to hold my blade.
It glows bright red when it appears out of thin air again, and becomes darker and darker as corruption floods into it. It won’t be able to use as much power as before, but at least I won’t have to focus on defending. I can still give it everything I’ve got to break through this barrier.
The Demon patiently waits, watching as both of us use everything we have to swing upward at the rift.
It only shows a thin smile once we collide.
Maria and I, on the other hand, are horrified.
The explosive power in our attacks is everything we have. The peak of our Royal Vibrations thrust into this attack. There are hundreds of layers of vibrations around both blades. The Royal Corruption, and Royal Blue Ice with the Source Resin of an Origin World strengthen our attacks to a mind bending degree.
Yet, on impact, our blades only stop moving forward like they have hit a solid barrier.
They don’t bounce off. They are only stopped short. I can feel the pressure behind this rift reverberate through my soul and understand that it is coated with some kind of higher refined ether that cannot be broken by Celestial Energy.
“Trust me, if I could break it, I would have left this place long ago…” The Demon remarks in an amused tone, with a hint of sorrow.
“That’s High-Quality Ether for you. The Imperials made this place as a training ground back in their era… but now the lower-ranked Family Heads just use it as their prison, and let their kin believe they can make it out.”
Fatigue floods through my body, as I have truly hit my limit. My false arm, and sword both fade back into my soul. Maria’s core attempts to pulse again, but the surge of energy that comes out isn’t strong enough to make a difference. The crystal sword in her grasp dissolves back into her soul.
We both start to fall away from the bright white wall in the sky, back down toward the darkness.
The Demon reappears above us, holding its club in both hands as we slowly drift, and swings downward with a simple and direct movement.
“It is a shame. I’ve never seen anyone use that method of Celestial Energy cycling together to increase its purity. Your soul bond just wasn’t strong enough to complete the true Royal Transformation. How did you ever expect to sync your Vibrations if you kept the biggest secrets of your power from one another…”
It lets out a sigh while slamming the club down on our exhausted bodies.
The pressure is so immense, it shocks my soul.
I can feel all of my cores cracking, on the verge of exploding into dust.
My fatigue is so great, all I want to do is fade away into the darkness.
Yet, my instincts, and the tightly grasped hand of Maria, push me to do one final last resort move to save our lives.
I force all of my remaining mental focus into a single finger on my one remaining hand.
This whole time while traveling the ravine, I’ve been slowly figuring out how to manually activate functions of the system. There is one artifact that I haven’t been able to stimulate yet, and I know its mission is dependent on my survival, so this is the perfect, and possibly the only time to push its limits.
The black ring on my finger pulses ever so slightly with purple threads as it feels my cry for help.
In response, an extremely fast surge of thin purple barriers pushes outward in two directions.
It floods through both Maria’s and my arms and covers our cores at the peak of the impact.
They are fractured into thousands of pieces, but are held together in place to keep us alive.
It is only a barrier of divine threads, capable of blocking physical attacks, the mental burst of this monstrous royal’s energy is not weakened at all, and forces both of us to pass out cold as we’re sent flying down into the darkness as fractured cores, only holding on by the arms held together by purple threads.
–
The Demon lets out a sigh and allows its club to float back up above its head, while it slowly descends, watching the remains of these two humans fall below into the crack at the center of the temple.
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