LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

Although the spawns were silent and even their movements were silent, that was only when there were a few dozen of them, but now that tens of thousands were moving, it was almost as if the world was ending.

The earth kept rumbling and shaking, and if not for his present weight, which was around a thousand kilograms, Elias knew that he would have trouble with his balance as he was moving quite quickly.

Elias noticed that the swarm of spawns was all heading towards the center of this place, and from his position, it was as if a sea was passing by in front of him, but this sea was filled with bodies.

He had once seen a swarm of locusts inside the desert, and this sight was similar, but only a thousand times worse.

Although this sea was not being directed towards him, it was impossible that he would reach his destination without any opposition, and indeed it was not long before he found them.

They had been feeding on a corpse, one of the candidates who must have fallen in the first wave; his armor was cracked open, and his face frozen in a scream that had never finished.

Four spawns surrounded him and were eating his corpse, and Elias hoped that the youth was dead before he was eaten, but the pained grimace of his face in death meant that he must have been alive while his guts were torn out of his body.

The spawns with glowing red eyes lifted, their jaws dripping with blood and ash. Then they did something they had never done before; upon seeing him, they hissed like snakes before they attacked.

It would take more than this to startle him, and Elias did not slow his movement. He was moving at the pace of a fast horse and carrying enough weight on his body to crush stone.

His shield came up, and he smashed the spawns in front of him. The impact was devastating as it carried a wet, pulping sound, the sound of flesh and bone and cartilage collapsing into a single, unrecognizable mass.

The force behind his charge flattened two of the spawns, and the last flew backward, its spine bent at an angle that should not have been possible, and it crashed into three more spawns behind it.

They did not get up; in fact, it would be a miracle if they were able to, seeing that they had been almost crushed flat.

Elias stepped over the bodies and kept walking. He looked at the shield, and there was a small dent in it.

Figures, even metal laced with Profound Iron would not last in a fight like this.

He had been holding it back, Stone Skin. The ability from his Art of Stone gave him 55% physical damage reduction when he wore full armor.

If there was ever a time or a situation where this power was needed, Elias looked at the endless tides of bodies, and then it was now.

After such a long time, the Passenger whispered in his head,

"This is it… this is the tide that swallows the world."

He closed his eyes, giving the Passenger free rein to remain in his consciousness. It loved slaughter, and Elias saw nothing but death for a long time in his future.

He allowed himself to feel peace for a single heartbeat, and then he let the Art flow through him.

The armor and the shield that had been a tool became an extension of his will, as the stone that had been sleeping in his bones woke up.

When he opened his eyes, they were no longer green. They were the color of granite, of limestone, of the deep earth beneath the city.

His skin had not changed; he could not see it beneath the armor, but he felt it. The density and weight of stone gave him a promise that he would not break.

Stone Skin activated, and his armor became his skin, leaving a standing statue inside this hellscape.

His Durability, already 278, surged with the passive 10% increase from Stone-Souled, pushing his Vitality, already 6,127, to 6,737.

Elias took a step forward, and the ground around him shook as the earth seemed to cave in around him. The spawns detecting his presence came for him in their hundreds, and behind them were thousands.

Elias planted his feet and raised his shield, and the first wave hit him like a breaking wave.

Claws scraped across his shield, leaving tiny scrapes that were almost unnoticeable when they would have penetrated ordinary steel.

Teeth found his pauldrons, his vambraces, his cuirass. They bit down, but they found stone.

The spawns' claws shattered against his pauldrons. Their teeth cracked against his vambraces, and when they bit down, their jaws broke.

Elias could hear the laughter of the Passenger as he swung his shield.

He did not use any technique or talent; it was sheer, brute force alone, with his Strength 187, amplified by the weight of his armor, amplified by the density of his stone-fused flesh.

The shield's edge caught a spawn in the chest, and the spawn did not fly backward. It exploded. Its torso caved inward, its ribs shattering, its spine snapping, its body collapsing into a cloud of ash that should have scattered.

It did not scatter, as if his body became a magnet; the ash clung to him before it sank into the stone of his skin and was absorbed.

Inside his Lumina Space, the void pools stirred.

Elias had known the ash would feed his Void Scripture. That was why he was here. But he had not known it would be like this.

The ash did not just touch his skin; it was drawn to him. It flowed toward him like water toward a drain, pulled by the hollow space where the Hollow Monarch's scripture lived.

That single swing he made exploded dozens of spawns into ash, and they were drawn into his body in a flood.

Each spawn he killed added to the ash. Each cloud of ash was drawn into his body. Each particle that entered him fed the void.

His Status Screen flickered at the edge of his vision.

Vein Completion (Void Scripture): 0.00018% → 0.00021%

It was a tiny increase. Barely measurable. But it was happening with every kill, every breath, every step. The ash was a meal. And Elias was starving.

But there was something else.