Chapter 656: Ticking Clock (1/2)
Zac looked at the encounter between his sister and the Administrator, grasping at a last hope that she had some way to deal with this mess. He had never felt so weak as he did right now. He hated the feeling of not only being the weaker party, but being so far behind that you had no say in your fate. The Administrator, the Collector, the Great Redeemer. All beings infinitely more powerful than himself.
Kenzie came through.
Zac didn’t understand what happened next, but the Administrator instantly lost his structural integrity and turned into a pool of alloy that melded with the floor. As for Kenzie, she didn’t escape unscathed as she fell on the ground, her aura instantly turned extremely unstable. Whatever she had done had hurt her soul. Badly.
“Is it dead?” Zac asked after he flashed over as threw his best soul-healing pill into his sister's mouth.
“No way,” Kenzie said with a weak voice. “Jeeves only knocked him out, kind of like I did with the bots. It will not last long though. We have a few minutes.”
A pillar attached to the ceiling suddenly broke off and fell on another two, causing a huge shockwave as unbridled Origin Dao spread kicked up a storm. It came out of nowhere since that particular pillar was far away from any of the fighting. Had the Administrator controlled the containment field by itself until now?
Over a hundred more pillars collapsed a second later, and the Dimensional Seed once more woke up with unprecedented fervor.
“Uh, perhaps even less,” Kenzie sheepishly said, confirming Zac’s fears.
The situation was quickly deteriorating from there, and in more ways than one. One pillar after another collapsed, and with them the fetters on the Dimensional Seed. The spatial fluctuations were quickly approaching dangerous levels, and the Seed was clearly struggling to break through the final barriers.
If Zac almost felt like he was caught inside the containment field again, and Kenzie's state was even worse. But the one who was the most impacted by the change was Void's Disciple. He was broken and half-dying, but his aura was simply terrifying. His face had turned into a mad visage as he cackled while absorbing more and more spatial energies.
This was their only chance. Zac stomped down and appeared right in front of the madly laughing Adcarkas. He looked up at Zac with a sneer, but he didn’t get the chance to attack before Zac crushed a small crystal hidden in his hand behind his shield. Adcarkas reacted quickly and tried to teleport away, but the effect was instant.
There wasn't even a ripple then the crystal broke, but the Dominator screamed as he clutched his head like he was going mad. A spatial storm immediately erupted around him and hundreds of spatial tears shot out in every direction. It was like his body was being drained of spatial energy, much to the detriment of the surroundings.
Zac quickly summoned [Immutable Bulwark], barely avoiding getting cut into pieces. Zac looked on with horror as another hundred pillars were destroyed in an instant, which only sped up the collapse of the whole building. He couldn’t let this go on, so he quickly stomped down on the ground, finally activating [Profane Seal] to enclose the mad Dominator.
This was the first time Zac had activated the skill since it reached Peak Mastery, and the difference was clear. A proper wall had finally been added to the towers and the gates, and the skill now essentially formed a proper fortress to trap anyone inside. The defensive properties had clearly been increased to a whole new level, which was exactly what Zac currently needed as it blocked out an endless number of errant spatial tears.
For the first time, there were no new chains added when the skill upgraded, but the ones that were already there had been empowered. They now looked a lot more corporeal compared to before, like they wouldn’t instantly melt when put close to flames or other powerful forces.
This was probably the last opportunity Zac would get, and he felt that the poisonous compound in his body was already starting to break down his muscles. It still gave him an empowering effect, but it would soon turn into a weakened state. With the compound downsides of [Hatchetman’s Rage] and the [Rageroot Oak Seed], he honestly wasn’t sure he would be able to avoid getting crippled, let alone able to keep fighting.
Clouds of miasma and putrefying gases spread out through the cage as he activated [Winds of Decay] and [Fields of Despair], and he pushed the taunting effect of [Vanguard of Undeath] to the max as a hundred skeletons appeared in an instant thanks to [Force of the Void]. One skeleton after another disintegrated as Zac transferred the damage from getting hit by spatial tear after spatial tear as he pushed through the storm surrounding the dominator, and they had all fallen even before Zac had managed to push through the chaos.
The defensive skill was destroyed in an instant, and [Profane Seal] crumbled a few seconds later, but it had allowed him to get close to the delirious Void’s Disciple without exacerbating his wounds even further. Unfortunately, the Dominator’s body was exhibiting some extremely weird symptoms. It was in constant flux since the spatial energy inside his body was going out of control.
Zac wasn’t even sure decapitating the Dominator was possible in his current ghostlike state, and just as expected, his Fragment of the Axe-imbued bardiche passed straight through him without causing any damage at all. Zac scrambled for ideas, and he suddenly thought of something.
A mottled sword appeared in his hand, and Zac immediately stabbed it into the Adcarkas’ forehead. Zac figured that if the sword was made by extracting the soul of a high-grade cultivator, it might contain some of his high-grade Dao as well. His own High-tiered Dao Fragment had obviously not been enough to harm the man in his current state, and it was either this or using his Remnants.
This time there was an effect, but Zac frowned as he was forced back by a shockwave, and he looked on with alarm as hundreds of the sinister veins sprung out from the weapon, trying to latch onto anything they could. A few shot straight for Zac who barely avoided them, but most targeted Adcarkas’ body. It was like the sword was trying to fuse with the Dominator.
Adcarkas actually wasn't dead even after getting a sword pierced into his forehead, and Zac had finally run out of steam. He really regretted using the Cursed Sword instead of his remnants, but he had simply been too afraid to activate them in his current state. If Adcarkas somehow merged with the demonic sword, all might be lost.
He ate a Soldier Pill to mitigate his exhaustion, but the weird aura was extremely dangerous. Zac hesitated for a second before he took out a second spike from his spatial ring. Was this the time to worry about the future?
“Warmaster, let me,” a rumbling voice said, and Zac turned back to see a shocking sight.
It was Rhubat, his burning life force making him look like a god of war, and the spear in his hand made its name justice. Behind him stood the twenty-two still-living Anointed, each of them with a seal shining above their heads as their life force created bonfires that incinerated Zac’s putrefying mists.
“I am the Chainbreaker, I will end this Crusade,” he said as his aura rose even further.
The twenty-two seals gained an almost blinding radiance the next moment, but they didn’t shoot toward Adcarkas. Instead, they shrunk as they entered Rhubat’s body one after another. Each seal imbued Rhubat with unimaginable power, but Zac soon understood the price of this skill as one Anointed after another collapsed, their bodies shrunken husks.
They were dead without a doubt, not a morsel of life force remaining in their bodies. They had sacrificed everything they had left for the crusade.
Rhubat’s eyes became glowing orbs divine retribution, but cracks rapidly spread across his body since he was clearly unable to withstand the enormous force. He looked like a statue on the verge of crumbling, but there was no expression of pain or word of complaint as he started running toward Void’s Disciple, his aura alone keeping the Spatial Tears at bay.
Adcarkas was on his last legs in his struggle against his mental demons and the cursed sword, but it was like he regained a hint of clarity the moment Rhubat approached. He unleashed yet another sphere of condensed space with a defiant roar, his face covered with wiggling veins. However, Rhubat punched down on the ball with a roar, crushing space itself at the price of mauling their thick fingers.