Chapter 556: Heavens Mandate (1/2)

Pain and pressure threatened to tear Zac’s body apart in an instant as it swelled to uncomfortable proportions. However, Zac wasn't the same person as back when he was flooded by Cosmic Water, and he forced himself to remain conscious as he looked for solutions.

Another thing that differed from similar situations was that Zac wasn't exactly being filled up with a terrifying amount of Cosmic Energy as he was in the Cosmic Water or when forming his Duplicity Core in the Dead Zone. Whatever the purple bolt of lightning was made of seemed to be something different.

It would be more apt to call it a messy mix of countless different Daos.

Zac was almost delirious from pain, but he strove to actively combat the lightning bolt as well by utilizing his newest method of controlling his mental energy. Directly defending hadn't worked, so he instead tried to push it out of his body with Fragment of the Bodhi mental energy, essentially doing the opposite of when he completed the quest for [Blighted Cut]. However, the mysterious lightning bolt was completely unmoved by Zac's efforts.

The odd and messy heterogeneity that Zac had never encountered before made it extremely hard to combat. His Daos were effective against some parts of the bolt but almost seemed to be making things worse on other parts. He was quickly reduced to passively enduring the lightning as he ground it down by exhausting his mental energy. However, it wasn’t enough.

There was simply too much energy inside that bolt. And it was not only that, there were hints of high-tiered concepts beyond Zac’s current understanding hidden in the chaotic mix, making it even more precarious to carry it around in his body. Even the remnants seemed subdued in its presence, something he only had witnessed once before, trying to appear inconspicuous rather than railing against its prison due to the chaos.

Zac popped one pill after another into his mouth as he tried one thing after another to weather the storm, and the others had realized something was wrong by now. They rushed closer, but they didn't get too close after Zac arduously shook his head at them. They wouldn't be able to help him this time, but he was starting to despair as the bolt seemed to have no intention to relent in its efforts to rip his body apart. Bloody cracks had spread all over his body already, and a similar situation could be seen in his soul.

But a deep heartbeat suddenly echoed out across the area as [Void Heart] thumped.

Nothing Zac had done until now could even be considered a temporary relief against the bolt, but there was actually a change in the lightning that coursed through his body after his Hidden Node activated. Better yet, it didn't seem to be on an isolated part of his body either. The whole bolt was frozen after the first heartbeat. However, Zac also felt a sharp pain in his heart, seemingly a backlash from messing with the purple lightning. It looked like even his omnivorous Hidden Node had problems dealing with this.

The [Void Heart] didn’t give up after just one try though and another beat, this one even heavier, made his whole body vibrate. This time the foreign lightning didn’t just stop, but the Hidden Node actually managed to rip off a small piece of the purple energy in the bolt before it swallowed it whole.

The stabbing pain that followed almost made him black out.

Zac started to worry for real as blood seeped down his mouth. He had only absorbed a few percent of the energy, but the backlash felt almost as dangerous as the lightning itself. He would be dead long before the Node had absorbed it all and Zac still hadn't found any way for him to control it. Zac was elated that something finally worked, but he was also worried about the implications.

He was pretty sure that this bolt was some sort of Tribulation brought forth by the system. The timing was too spot-on, and what else would be able to conjure that endless bolt in the sky? Perhaps the tribulation came from forming a proper path, or perhaps there was something else behind its emergence.

In either case, it was something that should be sent by the System. It felt extremely risky to try and steal that energy for himself, especially as the pain after the second beat almost knocked him unconscious. What if the System got angry and retaliated?

A third beat and another piece of the bolt was sucked into the vortex in his heart, disappearing into some unknown space of the [Void Heart], and Zac was lying on the ground by this point. The rampaging energies lost their energy once again, freezing in place all over his body. It was extremely lucky as well, as the backlash this time actually did knock him out, though only for a few seconds.

Zac realized he had fallen down on the ground at some time, but he was too tired and in too much pain to sit up. He could only lay sprawled on the ground, panting and fearing for what would come next. Not a scrap of energy had been released back from the Hidden Node either, which was odd by itself.

The Node instead started shaking more and more violently until Zac puked out a huge stream of blood that shot down the mountain and turned into a red mist. It was the trapped purple lightning that had actually managed to escape from his node, damaging it a bit while doing so. It did seem a bit changed though, like he had spit it up mid-digestion.

A fourth beat echoed out but it looked like the purple bolt had enough of Zac's weird bloodline. It actually reabsorbed the regurgitated lightning and fled out of his pores, its tendrils seemingly destroying everything in his surroundings out of frustration. It created a magical scene where the whole mountain was illuminated in purple, and this time it looked as though the lightning was visible by everyone.

The bolt in the sky disappeared the next moment after emitting a final burst of fury and murderousness. Zac looked like he had just lost ten battles in a row, but the lightning didn't get away completely unscathed either. The Hidden Node had actually managed to reabsorb a small part of the escaped energy before it left his body.

Zac weakly opened his eyes to see the group staying some distance away, seemingly afraid to approach without his go-ahead.

”Are you okay? What can we do?” Joanna shouted with worry in her eyes.

”It's over, it should be fine now,” Zac said with a weak voice, but everyone on the mountain could easily hear it as even the weakest among them were late F-Grade warriors by now.

The Valkyries and Triv immediately rushed over while Ogras and Thea maintained the distance as they vigilantly looked at the surroundings. Zac snorted as he knew that the demon was simply afraid of getting hit by some surprise lightning. The Valkyries immediately started to clean his wounds as they erected a series of arrays around him, hiding Zac's wretched state from any prying eyes.

The ghost flitted around as it seemed to be observing the air around Zac. It only took a few seconds before Triv's eyes widened as its head snapped toward Zac who was still unable to get on his feet. It had clearly gleaned something from the remnant energy that had melded with the air and disappeared.

“This is Heavenly Lightning! Ancient Tribulation!” Triv said with horror in its eyes as it flew away from Zac once more. “What did you do to draw the wrath of the heavens?!”

The Valkyries already looked utterly baffled as they looked at Zac’s pathetic state and that only intensified when they heard Triv's words.

“Just meditating,” Zac said with a frown, his whole body feeling like it had been incinerated. “Why did I suddenly get blasted by another Tribulation?”