Chapter 65: Chapter 65: The Artificial Rift
Chapter 65: The Artificial Rift
Draven led the squad through the charred, skeletal remains of the industrial sector.
The heavy mist clung to the shattered concrete, completely muffling their footsteps.
They navigated the debris until they reached a short, jagged cliff of broken pavement overlooking a sunken basin.
Draven held up a closed fist, signaling the squad to drop low to the ground.
Down in the crater, the air shimmered with an unnatural, sickly dense energy.
In the absolute center of the basin sat a massive, pulsing mana stone covered in complex, glowing runic circles.
Surrounding the stone were over twenty grotesque, lumbering figures.
They were the heavily mutated acolytes of the Church, mindless, castrated monsters stripped of their humanity and manhood, bred entirely for violence and servitude.
Near the array core stood a Priest of the Eternal Eclipse. His eyes were closed in a manic, euphoric trance.
He was gently stroking the massive mana stone, whispering fanatical, twisted words of love to it as if it were a living, breathing partner.
"What are those things?" Reina whispered, looking at the glowing stone and the horrific guards with deep unease.
"Mutated acolytes," Draven explained quietly, keeping his pitch-black eyes locked on the Priest.
"The Cult strips away their flesh, their minds, and their manhood to turn them into perfect, unthinking meat shields."
Estella gripped her silver bracelet. "And the glowing stone?"
"An artificial spatial array," Draven stated coldly.
"Humans today think monsters just randomly pour out of dimensional rifts like natural disasters. They don’t. The monsters on the other side possess terrifying intelligence. They brainwash these Church fanatics and manipulate the Cult into building these arrays to tear the doors open from our side. They are trying to summon a localized Beast Wave right at our doorstep."
Aegon’s crimson eyes flared with absolute disgust. He gripped his Blood Fire Spear tightly.
"Then we destroy it. What is the plan?"
"The plan is simple," Draven said. He stepped right up to the edge of the short cliff. "We eliminate them in one scoop."
Draven did not pull out a tactical knife. He did not hold back to maintain his ’Extra’ facade.
For the first time since entering the Wildlands, Draven tapped into the massive, terrifying ocean of mana he had built up through continuous passive cultivation.
He drew out almost half of his entire mana pool in a single, devastating surge.
He visualized a massive, omnidirectional kinetic sphere encompassing the entire crater.
"Now," Draven commanded.
He violently closed his fist.
Down in the basin, the fundamental laws of physics shattered. A localized, crushing gravitational vector slammed into all twenty mutated monsters simultaneously.
They didn’t even have time to shriek.
The invisible force scooped them off their feet and violently slammed them all together into a tight, inescapable ball of flesh directly surrounding the Priest.
The Priest’s eyes snapped open as the heavy, mutated bodies crashed into him from every side.
"What is happening?!" the Priest screamed in sheer panic.
His spatial chanting was forcefully broken mid-syllable. The sudden, violent interruption caused a massive mana encroachment.
The corrupted energy backfired, tearing through the Priest’s veins. He shrieked in agony as his own spell began to cook him from the inside.
"Estella!" Draven shouted over the noise.
"Now!"
Estella stepped up to the cliff’s edge. Her silver bracelet shifted instantly into her wooden staff, glowing with an intense, blinding white-gold light.
She gathered her immense Level 35 Intelligence stat into the tip of the weapon, her eyes blazing with absolute authority.
"Astral Annihilation: Starfall Cannon!" Estella chanted.
A colossal, deafening laser of pure starlight erupted from her staff.
The beam was as thick as a house. It tore across the crater, illuminating the Wildlands like a second sun, and slammed directly into the compressed ball of monsters.
BOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was blinding. The extreme heat of the starlight vaporized the castrated monsters instantly, turning their mutated flesh into a cloud of fine white ash.
Draven’s vision immediately flooded with a cascade of blue screens.
[Ding! Target Eliminated. 200 EXP Gained.]
[Ding! Target Eliminated. 200 EXP Gained.]
[Ding! Target Eliminated. 200 EXP Gained...]
(A full twenty notifications scrolled rapidly past his eyes.)
The dust and smoke slowly began to clear in the crater.
In the center of the scorched earth, the Priest somehow still stood. His midnight-blue robes were burned to cinders, and half his skin was severely charred.
He stumbled forward, a look of pure, fanatical madness in his eyes.
"You... you heretics!" the Priest yapped, coughing violently.
"The Eternal Eclipse will consume you! Everyone who defies the Cult shall be stripped of their flesh and..."
Blegh!
The Priest vomited a massive puddle of black blood onto the dirt, his internal injuries from the mana backlash completely ravaging his organs, but his brainwashed mind refused to stop talking.
"The blood of the innocent will pave the way for our God, and you brats will be the first to..."
SCHLICK.
A blur of crimson fire materialized directly behind the yapping villain.
Aegon Logcheville stood tall, his Blood Fire Spear thrust cleanly through the Priest’s back, bursting out the front of his chest.
The Priest froze. He looked back over his shoulder at the towering spearman.
"What...??" the Priest gasped.
Aegon twisted the spear and brutally yanked it out. The Priest collapsed face-first into the dirt, dead before he could finish his delusion.
Reina lowered her axe from the cliff.
"Well. That shuts him up."
Aegon flicked the blood from his spear and looked up at the squad.
"The targets are neutralized. But what do we do about this array core? We can’t just leave a dimensional beacon sitting out here."
"We secure the perimeter," Draven said, sliding his hands back into his pockets as he hopped down the short cliff.
"We need to report this immediately. An official extraction team from the Command Centre or the Vanguard Council needs to come and dismantle the core before it reactivates."
Just as Draven spoke, a sharp, encrypted vibration pulsed on his wrist.
He glanced down at his Nexus-Band. It was a high-priority, secure message from Student Council President Sharika.
’Come to the address below immediately.’
Beneath the text was a set of hidden coordinates.
Draven’s pitch-black eyes narrowed. The mission was already highly suspicious, but this added an entirely new, dangerous layer to the board.
