Chapter 709: Horde of Billions
"It’s Zombies now?!"
Evan exclaimed as his flames erupted, setting the nearest corpses ablaze, and reducing them to ash in mere seconds.
But even as their remains scattered, more hands clawed their way from the earth, and within moments, the ground was flooded with thousands of walking corpses, each one staring at them with vacant, soulless eyes.
At first, the group cut through them with ease, their attacks almost too fast and powerful for the walking corpses to react.
Arthur crushed them with gravity, Evan’s flames incinerated the corpses in waves, and Artemisia and Beatrix tore them to bits with bursts of light and lightning magic.
But it only took five seconds for everything to change.
The easily flammable corpses now seemed to resist Evan’s flames.
The ambient cosmic energy surged into the bodies and the walking corpses that were wandering mindlessly began launching attacks.
Striking first was a massive, decaying corpse that lashed out at Arthur with a cosmic-energy-infused fist. He blocked the strike, but the force of the blow sent a shockwave rippling through the battlefield.
Others followed suit, using their newfound energy to unleash skilful and powerful attacks.
Arthur summoned Celestia, splitting the giant corpse in two, but barely a second later, he found himself surrounded by sword-wielding corpses.
Each blade was infused with sword law energy and cut through the air with alarming speed.
Evan found himself surrounded by robed figures holding crooked staves, and after noticing how Arthur was surrounded by swordsmen all of a sudden, he had a bad premonition.
’No way...right?’
The robed figures suddenly conjured blue magic circles that unleashed spears, bullets and pressurized torrents of water, intending to drown him in the deluge.
"You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!"
The Rogue Hero cursed as he unleashed an omnidirectional burst of icy energy that froze all the attacks, as well as the zombies who fired them.
But before he could shatter the ice, spears of flames rained down on him from flying monsters, forcing him to conjure a shield to block.
Artemisia and Beatrix stuck close to one another, especially since they were the weakest of the lot here.
They covered each other’s weaknesses as they zapped in and out of the enemies’ reach, delivering quick strikes. Beatrix coated her staff with spatial power, using it to smash through the bones of attackers with every swing.
But soon, things quickly turned dire.
Every strike felt heavier. Every blow seemed to take longer to deliver.
The undead were no longer just mindless husks—they were fighting back with skill and cunning. And their numbers only grew, as if the planet itself was spawning them faster than the group could take them down.
The ground shook violently once more, and dozens of walking corpses exuding Sovereign Realm energy emerged from the earth.
Each one unleashed full powered attacks of devastating magnitude—blinding beams of destruction, crushing shockwaves, and bursts of all conceivable elements—that ripped apart the landscape.
The group instantly scattered to avoid the strikes, mere seconds before massive craters formed in the spot where their feet once stood.
Just as Arthur used his Gravity Pseudo-Authority to flatten everything within a hundred-metre radius of his position, Bewússtsein’s enraged voice rang out, a thunderous roar that reverberated across the planet with pure, unbridled fury.
[YOU FUCKING INSECTS KEEP RUINING EVERYTHING I’VE PLANNED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK WITH ME?! WITH MY PLANS??!! DIE! DIE! STERBEN! YOU WORTHLESS SHITS!
BE CRUSHED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THE BILLIONS WHO LIVED ON THIS PLANET!
THAT’S THIRTY FUCKING BILLION!!!
TRY BEATING THAT!!! NOTHING’S GONNA SAVE YOU!! YOUR COSMIC ARTIFACTS CAN’T DO SHIT!
FEEL MY WRATH, YOU FILTHY BASTARDS! DROWN IN DESPAIR! DROWN AND ROT, YOU FUCKING SCUM!]
The venom in his words was palpable, every syllable laced with raw hatred and a desire to obliterate.
One would almost think he wasn’t the one who had kidnapped the four teenagers and tried to absorb their bodies and souls.
As his voice echoed, the battle took a darker turn. The energy surrounding the corpses surged, and an even greater threat emerged.
From the depths of the earth came hordes of Transcendent Realm walking corpses, each one unleashing powerful attacks that split open the ground and sent shockwaves rolling across the horizon.
Jamie narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowing in frustration. The situation was spiralling out of control.
He snapped his fingers and the spatial energy marks he’d placed on the other six activated, teleporting everyone to his side.
"We can’t afford to get separated with this many coming at us."
He glanced at the hordes swarming toward them, his hand about to enter his subspace when a sudden realisation struck him like a lightning bolt.
’Wait... I didn’t sense any life on this planet earlier. Could it be...?’
Jamie’s eyes widened as it dawned on him.
The ’billions’ of corpses Bewússtsein had screamed about weren’t from some unknown reserve.
They were the dead inhabitants of Cruotis Prime.
Bewússtsein had absorbed the souls of those billions, their organic matter preserved for his plan to create a vessel for himself after severing his connection to the planet.
But in his rage, he had unleashed them, a tidal wave of death and destruction meant to drown Jamie and the others in an endless onslaught.
Fighting billions of walking corpses was an impossibility. Even with Rule Breakers, Cosmic Grimoires or Deity-level gear on their side, they’d be overwhelmed eventually.
And that’s exactly what Bewússtsein intended.
While they battled the endless waves of corpses, Bewússtsein would move forward with his vessel creation, ahead of schedule.
He planned to drain and exhaust them with the relentless onslaught, waiting until they had no strength left to resist.
Once they were spent, he would finish them off, seizing their bodies and souls and using them to complete his ’Perfect Vessel’.
◇ ◇ ◇
Jamie grabbed the hilt of the Galaxy Sword within his subspace, about to draw it out when Arthur’s hand grabbed his.
He turned to face Arthur and the boy silently double-tapped his head, before pointing at the heads of the other five who were fending off waves of corpses.
Then, he said one word.
"Mind."
Arthur trusted Jamie understood what he was hinting at, and his trust wasn’t unfounded.
Suddenly, all the others felt a strange sensation in their heads, as if someone had just plugged themselves into their minds.
What followed, was Jamie’s voice ringing out in their heads.
[I connected everyone with my Telepathy. What did you want to say, Arthur?]
Their eyes widened in surprise at the words they heard, though their hands kept moving, kept fending off waves of undead.
At the end of the Infernal Dimension Saga, Jamie used telepathy to talk to Arthur and Evan, and that was how Arthur knew he had this ability.
Now, he had Jamie use it because what he had to say wasn’t something they could let Bewússtsein hear.
He had no doubt Bewússtsein was actively monitoring them to see when they’d fall, so any words they spoke would be instantly known to the enemy.
[Artemisia. Mind informing us about everything you saw in this guy’s memories?
Earlier, you said that he was trying to absorb our bodies and souls for our powers, and that it was all part of his plan to break free from his limitations and become an independent existence.
Thinking of how he’d somehow gotten to us on Aramis despite being a Planetary Consciousness, am I right in assuming that this guy wants to become an existence independent of this planet?]
Arthur’s statement and question had Alvey and McEnda nearly stumbling in shock.
Not surprising, considering they hadn’t known what their enemy actually was all this while.
Even Jamie who had sensed he was a Planetary Consciousness—hence why he tried to attack the Planet’s Core—didn’t know what his plans were or why he’d kidnapped the teenagers.
But hearing it now, some things were beginning to make sense.
[Yes, that’s his plan. I didn’t see ALL of his past. Just a few glimpses that were related to what he was thinking at the time.
I know that he planned to extract the best organic material from these corpses attacking us to use in creating his final body.
He also planned to absorb our souls into his own and extract our powers. Al-]
[Hold on.]
Jamie cut Artemisia off, his eyes narrowing as he asked.
[Did you say ’his own’? He has a Soul?]
[Yes. I don’t know how, but he has a soul.]
Artemisia’s revelation left the others staring at her with expressions of disbelief.
Planetary Consciousnesses, as they understood, were exactly that—standalone consciousnesses. They weren’t supposed to have ’Souls’ or ’Life’ in the conventional sense like other sentient beings.
But Bewússtsein did. He had a Soul. He had ’Life’.
That meant he could ’Die’.
They didn’t bother speculating how he had come to gain ’Life’. They all just focused on the fact that he could ’Die’.
And with his ’Death’...
Arthur and Evan exchanged glances, their eyes lighting up as they both blurted out the same word in unison.
""EXP!!""
In a strange, almost commendable way, their ability to think about experience points in the middle of such a moment was a testament to their oddly focused priorities.
[Did you see where that Soul was?]
Arthur asked, and Artemisia’s expression darkened a bit as she shook her head.
[I saw where it was, but I don’t know where that is.
It was in some strange place, the same place where he made those bodies that he used to attack us earlier.]
As she said earlier, she hadn’t seen ALL of Bewússtsein’s memories. Just glimpses of his past related to what he’d been thinking about when his ’time’ fractured.
As such, the information Artemisia had was fragmented.
[Can you describe the place?]
McEnda asked as Artemisia slashed through the zombies in front of her. She paused, taking a deep breath while jogging her memory.
[It was... some kind of cave, or more like a massive cavern.]
Her face scrunched up as she tried to find words to describe it, but it suddenly brightened as the perfect descriptor crossed her mind.
[It was just like that volcano dungeon we went to in the Infernal Dimension!]
This was something Alvey and McEnda didn’t know about, but Artemisia was not in the state of mind to consider that right now.
[There was lava everywhere, and the walls looked like a mix of flesh and stone. Oh, and—yeah, there was this giant ball of plasma in the air, like a sun, and it gave off all these different colours of light.]
She had barely finished her description when Evan suddenly cut in with two decisive words.
[Core Dimension.]
[Huh?]
Artemisia’s confusion was evident, prompting Evan to explain further.
[The sun-like thing you described—that’s probably a Planet Core. I’ve been to Aidos’ Core Dimension before, so I know what a Prime World’s core looks like.
The last thing you described sounded like it, so that place is likely this planet’s Core Dimension.]
Hearing this, the group exchanged looks, not even needing a second’s worth of consideration to see the sense in Evan’s words. A place like the Core Dimension sounded like the ideal spot for Bewússtsein to safeguard his soul.
But what exactly was a Core Dimension?
As said many times before, Prime Worlds were built different.
They had unique features that set them apart from lower-level worlds. For one, the cores of Prime Worlds didn’t exist within the same main dimensional space as the rest of the planet.
Instead, their cores were housed inside pocket dimensions nestled within the planet’s outer core. This pocket dimension, known as the Core Dimension, was where the Inner Core resided.
It was the most secure place on the planet—a perfect location for Bewússtsein to hide his soul.
’If we can get to the Core Dimension, then we might actually stand a chance.’
Arthur mused silently. But before he could dwell on the thought, Beatrix posed a critical question.
[How do we even get into the Core Dimension?]
