Chapter 175: Chapter 175: The Frozen Void
Chapter 175: The Frozen Void
The massive starmetal elevator screamed in protest.
We had been descending for two hours. The glowing magma oceans of Strata 6 were entirely gone, replaced by a suffocating, oppressive darkness.
The temperature outside the reinforced iron cage was plummeting at a terrifying rate. Thick layers of frost began to rapidly spread across the viewing glass.
I stood in the center of the elevator. My S-Grade Hive Chitin armor was fully pressurized. Kaelith, Lysandra, Nyssa, and Anise stood behind me, wrapped in thick thermal cloaks.
But the cloaks were not enough. The cold was unnatural.
Ramona stood closest to the glass. The ancient Half-Dragon was trembling. She was a creature born of magma and apocalyptic heat, yet her breath was forming thick white clouds in the air.
"The Zenith Academy did not build this place, Grik," Ramona whispered, her golden eyes wide with a creeping, ancient dread.
"I thought this Labyrinth was just a prison designed to hold my core. But I was wrong. Zenith just built their petty human city on top of the exhaust vent."
I turned my glowing red visor toward my Queen. "Explain."
"This is a planetary engine," Ramona breathed, looking down into the endless black abyss.
"The deeper we go, the closer we get to the true core of the world. The Zenith mages could never survive down here. We are entering the domain of the architects."
CLANG.
The elevator violently hit the bottom of the shaft. The heavy iron doors slowly ground open, snapping the ice that had formed over the gears.
A blinding, freezing mist flooded the cabin.
It was not normal ice. It was absolute zero. The temperature was so unfathomably cold that ambient mana could not remain in a gaseous state.
Pure magical energy was physically freezing in the air, falling to the ground like jagged, glowing blue snow.
Lysandra immediately dropped to her knees, gasping for air as the cold instantly pierced her thermal cloak and began shutting down her Succubus biology.
Nyssa staggered backward, her green tattoos flickering wildly as her kinetic core desperately tried to generate heat.
"Master," Nyssa choked out, her teeth chattering violently. "My internal mechanisms... they are seizing."
They were going to freeze to death in less than a minute.
I did not hesitate. I ignited my core and unleashed the absolute power of my new Dynasty Buff.
The Calamity’s Hearth.
My S-Grade armor violently flared. Deep, molten gold energy flooded my veins. My body became a literal, localized sun. The sheer thermal radiation pouring out of my massive frame instantly vaporized the freezing mist inside the elevator.
I projected my Domination Aura outward, wrapping the intense, comforting heat around my Queens like a heavy blanket.
Lysandra took a deep, desperate breath of the warm air, her maroon wings fluttering as the color returned to her pale face.
"Stay close to me," I commanded, stepping out of the elevator and into the Frozen Void. "Do not step outside my aura."
Strata 7 was a terrifying wasteland of jagged blue ice and towering glaciers of frozen mana. There was no sky. Just a ceiling of dark, frozen rock miles above our heads.
We did not have to search for the Guardian. It was already waiting for us.
Fifty yards from the elevator, the frozen ground violently erupted. A colossal, alien entity rose from the ice. It was not a beast. It was not a machine.
It looked like a biblically accurate angel forged entirely from pitch-black dark matter and glowing blue fractal ice. It had no face, only a rotating halo of jagged crystalline shards.
DING!
[System Warning: You have encountered a Primal Entity.]
[Target: The Void Weaver. Level 78 Guardian.]
[Observation: This entity is a manifestation of absolute stasis. It does not feel pain. It does not bleed.]
The Void Weaver did not roar. It simply raised one of its massive, fractal wings.
A localized blizzard of absolute zero blades shot directly toward us.
"I will melt it!" Ramona screamed.
The Half-Dragon stepped forward, her golden eyes burning with absolute fury. She opened her mouth and unleashed a colossal river of pure, Level 90 draconic fire.
The apocalyptic flames illuminated the dark wasteland, completely swallowing the incoming ice blades.
The fire slammed directly into the chest of the Void Weaver.
But the monster did not melt. The pitch-black dark matter inside its chest began to violently spin. It was actively absorbing Ramona’s draconic heat.
The massive entity grew in size, its blue fractal wings expanding as it fed on the thermal energy.
"It eats heat!" Kaelith warned, blinking out of the shadows right beside me.
"It absorbs kinetic and thermal energy. Grik, we cannot hit it!"
It was the perfect counter to the Forge. Every punch I threw would make it stronger. Every flame Ramona cast would feed it. It was designed to completely neutralize an aggressive, high-damage party.
The Void Weaver floated higher into the air. It pointed its faceless head toward my pack, preparing to reflect all of the absorbed draconic fire back at us in one devastating beam of supercooled plasma.
"Nyssa," I rumbled, my voice dark and perfectly calm.
"What happens when you force liquid into a sealed iron pipe and apply infinite pressure?"
Nyssa looked up at me, her brilliant mind instantly grasping my brutal logic. "The pipe shatters, Master."
I ignited my boot thrusters. I did not fly away from the monster. I launched my massive, armored body directly toward it.
"Feed it!" I roared to my Queens. "Give it everything!"
My Pack did not question my suicidal command. Anise raised her golden sword, unleashing a blinding pillar of Level 100 holy light.
Ramona roared, unleashing a second, even larger river of apocalyptic dragon fire. Lysandra pumped raw vitality magic into the air, and Kaelith unleashed a torrent of absolute void energy.
All four massive attacks slammed into the Void Weaver simultaneously.
The entity eagerly absorbed the energy. Its crystalline body violently swelled, glowing with terrifying, unstable power. It was gorging itself on our magic.
I crashed directly into the center of the monster’s chest.
My heavy brass gauntlets sank deep into the freezing, dark matter core of the entity.
The cold was agonizing, threatening to freeze the blood in my veins, but the Calamity’s Hearth buff perfectly protected my biological organs.
The monster tried to absorb my kinetic impact. It tried to drain my heat.
"You want to eat my power?" I growled, looking directly into its rotating, faceless halo. "Then choke on it."
I opened my core to its absolute maximum capacity.
I bypassed my physical limits, forcefully summoning both the pitch-black Flame of Death and the pure white Flame of Life at the exact same time.
I pumped the completely contradictory concepts of absolute destruction and absolute healing directly into the monster’s crystalline heart.
The Void Weaver froze. Its dark matter core could not process the paradox. It was built to absorb elemental magic, not the raw, unfiltered concepts of mortality.
The infinite pressure of my Sovereignty overloaded its internal capacity in a fraction of a second.
The massive entity let out a high-pitched, mechanical shriek.
CRACK.
I kicked violently off its chest, landing heavily on the ice below just as the monster completely detonated.
The Void Weaver shattered into billions of harmless, glowing blue particles. The absolute stasis holding the cavern together was broken.
DING!
[System Alert: Level 78 Guardian defeated.]
[Sovereign Core efficiency increased. You are now Level 68.]
[Title Acquired: The Abyssal Conqueror.]
I stood up slowly, the extreme heat radiating from my S-Grade armor melting the blue particles as they rained down around me.
"Flawless execution," I rumbled, crossing my massive gauntlets over my chest.
The Pack rushed forward, completely surrounded by my protective aura. Nyssa was already pulling a heavy mining drill from her spatial ring.
Her eyes were completely fixated on the massive, jagged crater where the Void Weaver had spawned.
Exposed in the ice were thick, pulsing veins of a hyper-dense, pitch-black metal. It swallowed the light around it, radiating an intense, heavy gravity.
"Void Steel," Nyssa breathed in absolute awe.
"It absorbs and neutralizes ambient magic. Master, if we coat the hulls of the Iron Leviathans with this metal, the Holy Empire’s divine magic will simply bounce off our submarines."
I looked at the veins of black metal. It was exactly what we needed to completely counter the Pope’s heavily enchanted armada.
"Harvest every single ounce of it," I commanded, my red visor glowing with absolute triumph.
"Strip this frozen hell completely bare. We are going to build a fleet that will swallow their god."
