Chapter 751: Pillar of Desolation (1/2)

The rampaging Twilight Energy was putting even Zac at a disadvantage as he felt dangerous amounts storming into his body even with the latent protection he had gained inside the valley. Thankfully, simply using his new-and-improved Dao Field lessened the pressure significantly, which allowed him to finish charging his new skill without having to turn to his Void Energy.

He had figured that a supreme-quality skill would be pretty energy-hungry, but he was shocked to find that it required 60% of his energy to finally form, meaning it was actually impossible to activate solely with his hidden energy reserve. That alone was crazy considering how massive an energy pool his attributes and Draugr heritage provided, but even more shocking was the fact that a small amount of distilled energy of Oblivion was dragged into the skill fractal.

Zac had no time to worry about that though as the skill was finally ready, and it was just in time. The eight puppets seemed to have realized that he wasn't exploding from energy overload, and their auras started to accumulate as they no doubt readied themselves to strike. However, they were too late as the whole area rumbled as it was rapidly being swallowed by endless darkness.

He himself was no exception, and he felt himself meld with the nothingness around him. He was suddenly one with the domain, and Zac felt he would be able to appear wherever he wished. He could also stay and let his skill do the work for him, which he opted to do. Unsurprisingly, the eight puppets instantly stopped in their tracks as they tried to find their way in the darkness.

From that darkness, a sole pillar suddenly rose from the ground, and even Zac was shocked at the grotesque monument of suffering even if he was the one who had conjured it. It looked a bit like a totem pole reaching fifty meters into the air, and it was completely constituted from statues and reliefs of hundreds of people locked in agony.

Some missed arms or other limbs, while others were maimed to the point of entrails spilling down on their neighbors. A few even held their decapitated heads in an embrace as they were pinned to the pole by thick chains that formed an intricate mesh from top to bottom.

Their wounds were carved with excruciating detail, yet their facial features were indistinct, creating a sense of discordance. But as Zac looked at the figures, the unreadable faces suddenly became all-too-familiar. It was the faces of those who he had killed on his journey. Thankfully, the effect only lasted an instant before the statues turned back to their previous form.

A few seemed to be struggling against the fetters that bound them while an even smaller group was lost in a fugue of abject hopelessness. However, most of the depicted warriors, especially those placed toward the top, seemed to be struggling to climb higher. To reach the orb above them.

At the top, a sphere of utmost darkness hovered, an anti-sun radiating true death. Zac could feel that not even an undead would be safe if entering that thing, since there ultimately was an uncrossable line between undeath and true death.

And in the heart of the orb - nothingness. Oblivion.

It was just a small seed, but it was enough to bring true finality to death. Yet, for some reason, the wretched beings seemed desperate to enter the orb, even though they were frozen in place. You could perhaps say that the totem pole represented limbo, whereas the orb represented release.

However, try as they might, they would never reach that spot, bound as they were by thick fetters of desolation. The orb hovered untouched, drenching the area in its immense aura.

The dark domain it had created was different from the darkness that spread from skills like [Deathmark] or Varo’s obfuscation skills. It was a sealed domain with no escape, and Zac looked with interest as the remaining runes of the pillar cracked, making sure that no other puppets would be teleported to the area.

At the edge of the domain, a river of darkness created a towering wall as impassable as the River Styx itself. Certainly, people could enter if they so wished, but doing so would put them in Zac's kingdom. Here he was sovereign ruler, the arbiter of fate. Not even Twilight held sway in here, and it was severely weakened by the combination of his Dao Domain and the orb exuding supremacy at top of the totem pole.

The zombified warriors worked as one, unsurprisingly deducing that the pillar presented a huge threat. Each of them conjured massive waves of energy as they launched their strikes at the base. Some of the attacks were elemental in nature, like the blast of twilight-touched lightning from the first cultivator to appear.

Others were just chaotic mixes of energy, condensed into a lethal storm that tried to tear apart everything it touched. However, not one of them used any skill, and Zac was starting to suspect they weren’t able to. Whatever was done to these people had fused them with the Twilight Ocean, probably at the cost of their original cultivation methods.

Zac sent out a mental command, and eight of the ethereal chains on the totem pole shot out, each of them targeting a puppet. They entered the chaotic storm of twilight like spears of death, but they were swallowed in the tide as the barrage slammed into the totem pole with enough power to almost destroy space itself.

However, the core of [Pillar of Desolation] only received superficial damage even from such a terrifying strike. Some of the statues had cracks running across their bodies while a few of the chains shattered. The chains that Zac had sent out were momentarily dispelled into puffs of darkness, but they had actually reformed after less than a second and were already closer to their targets than they were before.

The puppets finally displayed some semblance of sapience as they spread out, with four shooting toward the pillar whereas the others tried to break out from the domain. Those who went of the offense were struck down first, and Zac felt a surge of Miasma entering his body as the first of the puppets was caught while the other three desperately dodged.

Just like the old skill [Profane Seal], the chains immediately started draining their captives of energy, becoming fodder for Zac to keep fighting. The tattooed warrior furiously struggled as it released one strike after another, but the moment the chain had actually ensnared him, it was like it had transformed from an intangible manifestation of darkness into a physical object.

Suddenly, it was as durable as the totem pole itself, and it barely received a scratch as it dragged the man closer and closer to the pillar. In fact, it was a few of the statues that were pulling on the chain, and Zac almost felt like he could sense a hint of schadenfreude in their blank eyes as they pulled the captive closer and closer.

A second one of the zombies was caught soon after, and then a third. They were pretty agile even without access to skills, but many of their advantages were nullified here. Some of their energy-gathering ability was blocked out by the layers of domains, but more importantly, the whole area was under tremendous pressure from the orb in the air.

The old [Profane Seal] had a massive fractal that doubled as a gravity array, and that effect was retained in an even more powerful form from the glowing anti-sun. These puppets had tried to take the pillar down, but the closer they got, the more affected they were by the restriction. Soon enough, they became too slow to avoid the chains.

Zac sensed that he could actually activate [Blighted Cut] any time he wanted after having caught the first set of puppets, but he wanted to unearth the full effect of the skill now that he had activated it for the first time. Everything had been so clear when he formed the thousands of patterns that made up this terrifying ability, but it had all become blurred and confused even before he completed the process.