Chapter 1583 (2/2)

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Ultimately, the only way for the shade to find its way out of the shaft was by waiting for a flow of emotions and simply following in those energies’ wake. Riding on the back of a violent wave of rage, the shade accelerated upward. The current of significance parted before it, pushed back by just the basic form of the three-layered Nether Engraving it had created. The shade wondered how powerful it would be when it finally created its own physical core.

With speed came the tingling sense of momentum in the shade’s body. The sensation of freedom was intoxicating. A previously undiscovered urge to explore the Nexus bloomed in its heart; it wanted to run the gamut of this shaft, to truly see if this was an enormous skeleton. In addition, it was curious about the Aether Refinery at the base of this location.

But a steely and partially forgotten part of itself stopped the shade from straying; it had a mission to accomplish first.

So the shade rose through the darkness, closely following the emotions. After only a short amount of travel, it sensed the familiar subsonic buzzing of the automatons during their internal communications. The porcelain dolls immediately converged toward his location; their detection capabilities were quite sharp.

Yet that only made the shade even more excited.

The shade reached out and seized a fistful of emotions. Its incorporeal fingers began to stroke the energy, refining it with one of the lingering images that it remembered. More and more emotions spiraled together in its hands. It would make these fucks pay for the disgraceful way he had fallen in the past.

As though formally declaring a challenge to the shade, one of the automatons screeched and shot at the shade from the left. Although the shade still didn’t have an extremely strong ability to detect his foes, his improvements with detecting changes in Nether allowed him to feel their approximate locations. Just naturally, these automatons suppressed Nether around them. So where they were, the Nether was weak and listless. Those suppressed areas broadcast their presence to the shade’s sharp senses.

With a smile on its face, the shade sidestepped the first charging automaton and ripped open its central body with its clawed fingers. It didn’t bother to use either Neither or Aether, simply taking advantage of brute force.

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Unlike the impression from the shade’s foggy memory, it experienced no pain from the noise. In fact, it could grasp that opportunity more directly, shooting forward and ripping through three more automatons in the surrounding area. The shade’s Nether Nebula, although it hadn’t reached the power of a Nether Core, was still a dominant force in the areas of memory and connection. Here, it was near-unbeatable.

In this Nether-rich environment, the shade could practically teleport at will. It wasn’t a matter of speed, but all the connected space was within its reach.

But these automatons obviously had dealt with Nether beings in the past. In fact, they were probably designed especially to combat rogue Nether elements more than force random fools in the shaft down to their deaths. So while a dozen more automatons spiraled around to form a dense killing web around the shade, they began to devour the Nether in the air. Which, as the machines created larger and larger voids, masked the automaton’s position relatively well. It’s ability to instantly bridge between separate space vanished.

Still, the shade grinned like a wolf. Its had squeezed on the tight ball of emotions it had been steadily gathering and refining. That ball began to glow as the shade mobilized its abilities beyond just Nether.

That tiny core became a seed, which bloomed and grew rapidly. Wild rays of energy erupted from between the shade’s fingers. Sharp emotional knives lashed outward, cutting through the void and destroying the automaton’s bodies just as surely as the shade’s fingers had. The machines stalled in the air confused. The shade’s smile widened; a beast of Nether could not wield emotions so well as it could.

There was a hanging moment of confusion where the shade slaughtered all the close automatons.

And, as the shade had suspected, the automatons shifted their strategy. More flew closer, ceasing their absorption of Nether to spin and smash him downward. Those that were further away released pulses of energy that reinforced the reality of this place and dispersed the emotional bloom. In response, the shade spread its arm and released an enormous wave of Nether that replenished the energy in the air. Again, the spinning automatons stalled slightly. The split second that the automaton’s recognized again they were fighting a Nether Beast, the shade was among them, reaping their lives with its fingers.

The automatons had engagement modes for both Aether and Nether beings, but they had no way to handle both at once.

However, the shade grew bored after destroying around a hundred of the automatons; they continued to come endlessly, flying out from some distant location on the walls of the shaft. So when the next emotional current shot upward, the shade followed it, leaving the pursuing automatons in the dust.

Still, that shame and dissatisfaction in its heart had been finally laid to rest. The shade was much cheerier after having its revenge.

Unfortunately, it was soon stopped again; as the Nether content in the air rapidly dropped, the shade felt increasingly numb and stuffy. After having grown accustomed to the extremely detailed information it could gather with its senses, losing those senses was somewhat disorienting. Especially because it made the shade more reliant on its hearing.

Still, the shade had a mission. It must find a place for its Nether Core. So although it was uncomfortable, it rapidly acclimated and shot upward once more. The Nether content in the air continued to fall, dipping under 50% and even going so low as 20%. Here, again, the shade needed to stop and reevaluate itself. After some meditation, its senses began to compensate for the lack of Nether Sensation. Its ears twitched and flicked.

Gradually, vibrations revealed the surrounding space just as well as vision, and then Nether Sensation had. Grim Intuition was extremely adaptable.

Feeling pleased with itself, the shade left the shaft. It didn’t spare a single thought for the body it left behind.