Chapter 758: Magmatic Core (1/2)

The seal hiding Zac's Duplicity Core was broken, and he immediately began the transformation process. Soon enough he stood at the cave mouth in his human form, and he closed his eyes to once more sense the remnant energies from the Creation pulse. The supercharged life-attuned energy in the area was still hostile to him, but its effect was not much worse than any other attack at the moment. It was definitely a better idea to enter the volcano in this form.

Zac wasn’t stoked about using his human form and losing the protection of Leandra’s array after finding out that the Eveningtide Asura was lurking in some corner of the Twilight Ascent. But what choice did he have? Not getting the Shard of Creation would lead to his cultivation being crippled, which trumped any unproven concerns over his privacy.

The life-attuned energies were now manageable just like the fiery energies that permeated the area, but that still left the weak motes of diluted Creation. The core force that had carried the pulse was different to the Creation Energy he usually dealt with, in that this energy was raw, wild, and still tainted by the will of the shard itself.

It was much more troublesome to deal with compared to the distilled energy that was extracted from his trapped shard, and it didn't take long for Zac to realize that he wouldn’t be able to simply make the energy his own by absorbing it. However, he had another idea of how to deal with the pulses, and he once more waited at the edge of his chosen tunnel. Soon enough Zac sensed an identical build-up, though this one was slightly weaker.

It would still serve Zac’s purposes, and he readied himself as he sensed the turbulent wave of Life and Creation ripple forward. At the same time, two streams of energy entered his shoulders, and a small shimmering globe appeared between his hands, shuddering with unbridled possibility.

Suddenly, Zac pushed his hands forward, and the mark pushed into the wave of creation heading through him. Zac imparted his will into the Mark of Creation, and the small walnut-sized ball instantly grew into the size of a cantaloupe as it stole the wild creation in the area to power its creation.

Zac could sense how the act had started a chain reaction that would only end in disaster, and he hurriedly threw the Mark of Creation away before he flashed to safety with [Earthstrider]. A blinding eruption of light illuminated the whole ocean for a moment before a fifteen-meter wide object wrought from an alloy of stones appeared where the Mark once was.

It was a chaotic mesh of patterns and materials, and it broke apart the moment it hit the rocky ocean bed. Zac looked at it thoughtfully before his gaze turned to the blistering welts that had appeared across his hands.

That bright light had released a wave of chaotic energies that had passed right through him, and while his body was already fast at work repairing itself, it was something both hard to defend against and lethal. Zac looked out across the field of crabs, and he could see how many of them shuddered with pain until they slumped down one after another.

Still, the experiment was a success. He had not been directly impacted by any of the Creation Energy in the wave at all when it passed through him, and even the amount of weaponized Life had been lessened by a good margin. As for the weird rock the bundle of creation turned into, it was the result of Zac’s wish of the thing turning into a harmless boulder.

Why it didn't turn into a simple rock was harder to guess, and it could be anything from the influence of the Twilight Ocean, his lacking understanding of the Dao of Creation, or even the latent consciousness from the Spark of Creation. In either case, the Mark of Creation had turned extremely unstable the moment his purified energies had been joined by the wild energies in the pulse.

Seeing that he had found a method to push through the pulses, Zac sat down and rested for a few hours to restore himself to perfect condition. Using even a walnut-sized Mark of Creation left a small network of fine cracks across his neck, just like the Annihilation Spheres, and he knew he would have to conjure more of them to reach the heart of the volcano.

Those cracks were extremely hard to heal, but they solidified and became invisible after a few hours, lessening the risk of them worsening on their own. In an ideal world, Zac would have wanted to have already cleansed himself before that point, but he still hadn’t found a method to do so. Only his natural healing along with the purified energy of opposing remnants worked, and the cracks generally disappeared after a week or two if it came from a small-sized mark like this.

Zac didn’t have weeks to waste at the moment though, and he set out as soon as he felt his condition stable. He once more waited at the mouth of the volcano until yet another pulse erupted. This time he didn’t interact with the wave of Creation at all, instead opting to slip into the tunnel in its wake.

He knew he had roughly five minutes before the next pulse would arrive, and he pushed his speed as much as he could with [Earthstrider]. He turned into a blur, rushing through one tunnel after another, but he swore when he ran into one barrier after another. Eventually, three minutes had passed without him making any real headway, forcing him to escape once more and wait for the next pulse to pass before continuing his scan.

This cycle continued for hours, which later turned to days. There was something odd about those tunnels. It wasn't the fact that they were completely devoid of living things, or that it was wrought from a confusing mesh of a million different materials rather than the rough stone of the exterior mountain.

It wasn't even the fact that the tunnels made no sense from a geological standpoint, though it was a bit related. There was something mysterious about these paths, and Zac almost felt like he was running along the lines of an array rather than paths that were supposed to be the result of heat expansion.

Not only were paths extremely confusing and almost impossible to memorize, but it almost felt like they contained the secrets of the Dao of Creation. Sometimes he was even forced to stop as he felt a surge of inspiration coming on, but the feeling quickly passed. He was missing too much context to understand what was going on.

Thankfully, four days of ceaseless work bore some results. Zac started to gain some sort of inherent understanding, and he managed to make it deeper and deeper between each pulse. He had even managed to find two paths he believed had a good chance of leading into the volcanic core where he felt the Shard of Creation calling for him.

It wasn't only thanks to the fact he Creation-wrought tunnels started to make sense to him. He also had two rambunctious remnants locked in his mind that essentially functioned like compasses for him. They could definitely sense their sibling hidden in the heart of the Volcano, and their energies grew wilder the closer he got.

Those two tunnels he had found elicited a far greater response compared to any other pathway so far, making Zac believe they provided a direct path to the shard.

The problem was that the volcano was simply massive, and he would have to push through at least one pulse to confirm. He had already wasted one Mark of Creation on testing the viability of traversing the tunnels, and he couldn’t keep racking up the damage to his body right before absorbing the second Shard.

If he wanted to go, then he had to go all in. There was some lingering hesitation if he was doing the right thing. After all, he might expend multiple Mark of Creations only to find a dead end. If he kept doing that, he would soon enough either run out of Creation Energy or the cracks would reach an irreparable state.

But what choice did he have? His forte lay in brute force, but that was of little help against the powerful Natural Formation guarding the mouth of the volcano. So Zac grit his teeth and once more set out the moment his opportunity arose, pushing straight toward the path he felt most likely to bear fruit.

The temperatures steadily rose as the tunnel turned to a blur. He almost felt like he was passing through a fever dream. One moment the walls were made from glistening alloys, which then seamlessly turned into a convoluted crystal cave where he was hounded by thousands of his own reflections.

Dark twisted tunnels, jagged paths he barely could squeeze through, even a spot where gravity itself was suspended, forcing him to fly forward with the help of Cosmic Energy. There was no rule or reason, only unfettered creation. Zac constantly used his evolved movement skill to keep maximum pace, occasionally stepping onto the walls or ground to reset it.

Even then, there was no end in sight after rushing for over four minutes, and he could feel the incoming threat.

Two more streams of energy entered the circuits on his shoulders, and he formed a small mark of creation in his hands. Soon enough, the wave of creation came crashing through the tunnel, and Zac pushed his hands forward to intercept. Once more it was a success, and Zac threw the ball behind him, creating a huge eruption of flames this time.

He was currently passing through a submerged patch of tunnel, but not submerged by the Twilight Ocean. It was rather a hard-to-traverse swamplike water, where the liquid seemed to grip him harder the quicker he moved. The inferno incinerated the water that filled the tunnel as it rushed to fill the tunnel in two directions.