Chapter 1299: 00:00:01
The building trembled from the sudden impact, swaying under the strain, but the magically reinforced metal framework held long enough to prevent collapse.
One more hit would likely bring it down, though.
Evan brushed his fingers lightly, then lifted his hand and pointed upward.
"There."
"Huh?" Eliza blinked in shock and confusion as she followed Evan’s finger toward the night sky above them.
Laurene, however, immediately looked up before turning her attention back to Evan.
"What? You want to fly that thing into space? Evan, the atmosphere is huge, and on top of that, atmospheric exit is going to heat that bomb up. It’ll speed up the detonation process."
"Not if I get it into space before that happens," Evan replied.
He walked back toward the bomb and reinforced the ice around it using his Harbinger of Ice. "Ice can slow the timer. If I go at top speed with boosts from you, Zaos, and Liz, I should definitely be able to make the trip fast enough."
"Wait, Evan, no, this is too risky," Eliza said, shaking her head.
"We don’t have time for low-risk solutions," Evan shot back instantly.
Turning to Zaos, he spoke, "Please use your Pseudo Authority of Wind to buff me, and start already! The faster we are, the higher our chances of getting this thing into space before it blows."
Evan immediately activated Blessing of Destruction to enhance his overall power, then unfolded his dragon wings and summoned the Akashic Page to begin casting every support spell he could find.
Seeing this, they all understood just how determined Evan was.
Laurene clicked her tongue and joined in as well, channelling her own magic into him. Abigail used ambient cosmic energy to coat his body, and Zaos followed by activating his Pseudo Authority.
"Pseudo Authority of Wind: Wind Robe."
A swirling mass of wind wrapped around Evan’s body as the technique completed, and after that, Zaos temporarily removed the ice coating the bomb.
Evan did the same, reaching out to grab the bomb with both hands and lift it free, disconnecting it from all the cables linking it to the ground.
The cables were extremely hot, and it was clear they ran deep underground, likely connected to deeper planetary layers to siphon heat from below.
’This is likely how it’s managed to gather and store this amount of heat.’
The moment all those connections were severed, Evan and Zaos immediately froze the bomb again, leaving Evan holding a massive block of ice roughly 5 meters in diameter.
For reference, the bomb itself was about 2 meters wide.
"Liz!" Evan called out.
Eliza gritted her teeth before finally relenting, activating her support magic and layering multiple speed buffs onto Evan.
The moment she finished, Evan took a breath and, without hesitation, beat his wings hard, launching upward with the Instant Acceleration Wind Magic spell, while the sonic booms left in his wake tore through several floors of the building, causing the entire structure to start collapsing.
Zaos quickly used his magic to stabilise it, preventing the elven soldiers inside from being crushed by the falling structure, but Evan didn’t see any of that, as he was already several thousand meters into the sky.
As Evan shot toward the planet’s atmosphere, Zaos’ Pseudo Authority drew in ambient wind law energy to wrap around his body, and Eliza’s enhancement spells amplified his speed, while the massive sphere of metal and condensed cosmic energy continued trembling violently within the rapidly thinning shell of ice around it.
[00:10:31 | 52%]
The display on the bomb’s side kept rising even as Evan continuously fed magic power into the ice surrounding it, frost spreading across the giant sphere again and again, only to crack moments later under the pressure of heat trapped within its core.
Cloud layers split apart as he climbed higher into the atmosphere, his dragon wings beating against increasingly unstable air currents while sonic booms rippled continuously behind him and spread across the skies of the Beta Continent below.
[00:08:04 | 56%]
The higher Evan climbed, the stronger the reaction from the bomb he was carrying became.
Its surface had already begun glowing faintly beneath the ice, and fractures kept spreading through the frozen shell no matter how much magical power he fed into it, as the ambient heat generated by his hypersonic movement and atmospheric friction was now speeding up the bomb’s rise to critical temperature even further.
[00:07:12 | 61%]
Evan didn’t hesitate to abandon the idea of fully maintaining the ice and redirected more of his remaining magic power into speed instead. This caused the remaining ice to melt quickly into water that vaporised almost instantly, and the moment Evan’s hands made direct contact with the bomb, he groaned lightly in pain.
The sudden exposure to unmitigated thermal bleed began to bypass his physical defences and resistances, the radiating energy now in the tens of thousands of degrees Celsius scalding his flesh.
’Mesarthim: ORANGE: Flammable Arm!’
Evan’s arms were instantly engulfed in orange flames, acting as a barrier to isolate the transfer of heat from the bomb to his arms, and with those flames blocking the pain, Evan released a compressed burst of flames beneath his feet like a jet booster to accelerate his ascent.
[00:04:43 | 74%]
The sky above him darkened quickly as the atmosphere thinned into near-vacuum conditions, stars becoming visible overhead while the curvature of the planet stretched beneath him on an immense scale.
[00:03:29 | 81%]
Evan crossed beyond the planet’s atmosphere entirely, and the moment he entered space, Evan activated his Paladin and Adamantine Might, then Body Transformation, his muscles bulging unnaturally as he hurled the bomb upward with all the force he could gather, activating Shockwave in the same instant.
[00:02:11 | 89%]
The giant sphere shot thousands of metres farther into space, and Evan, not allowing his dragon heart to rest, activated another skill.
’Gravitational Maelstrom.’
Space distorted in the distance as a massive gravitational well formed far ahead of the bomb, an invisible force pulling violently at everything nearby.
[00:01:26 | 94%]
Fragments of long-deactivated satellites, metallic debris, and drifting remnants of ancient space junk were dragged toward the centre together with the bomb itself, the gravitational pull forcing the sphere farther from the planet while its percentages kept climbing higher and higher.
[Forget that, Evan! Just get back within the atmosphere, or I can’t protect you from the blast with my Cosmic Energy Barrier! Your body can’t handle too much cosmic radiation!]
The loud and urgent voice of the Planet’s Consciousness echoed in Evan’s mind, and he barely held back from a chuckle at the layers of emotion within it.
But that aside, ’her’ warning was valid. Every planet had a cosmic energy barrier in its atmosphere that filtered ambient cosmic energy from space down to a level that beings on the surface could endure.
Evan was currently outside that barrier, in a body that, while stronger than average Transcendents, was not yet Transcendent.
His hands had already started turning blue, so he quickly used magic power to rotate his body, fold his wings slightly, and combined Shockwave with Mesarthim’s flames, acting like a jet booster to shoot downward toward the planet below.
[00:00:51 | 97%]
Atmospheric re-entry began within seconds.
[00:00:08 | 99%]
Flames spread around his body as he descended back into the upper atmosphere, the world beneath him growing larger with each passing moment while the bomb continued shrinking into the darkness behind him.
Then the display finally reached its limit.
[00:00:01 | 100%]
For a single moment, the night above the Beta Continent and the surrounding oceans turned white.
A blinding flash erupted high above the planet, so radiant it resembled a second sun appearing in the skies, its brilliance illuminating oceans, mountain ranges, forests, and cities alike as though it were midday instead of midnight.
Even Evan, already descending through the atmosphere, felt the light engulf his entire body.
Then came the explosion.
———!!!
The expanding blast slammed directly into the planet’s magnetic field and the cosmic energy barrier surrounding the atmosphere, causing both to tremble violently as massive ripples spread across the skies of the world.
Sections of the upper atmosphere distorted and split apart under the pressure of the detonation, exposing streaks of radiant cosmic light before the planet’s magnetic field forcibly pulled the leaking radiation back and dispersed it across the skies in vast auroral curtains stretching from horizon to horizon.
Even Evan, already descending back through the atmosphere, was fully engulfed by the edges of the expanding cosmic blast. His entire body shook violently as waves of cosmic radiation washed over him, the pressure sending him hurtling downward through the atmosphere even faster while the sky behind him distorted under the force of the explosion.
The waves of energy continued spreading across the planet regardless of distance. The atmosphere trembled visibly above entire continents, massive ripples moving through the clouds and skies alike, and even those far away on the Alpha and Dark Continents felt the terrifying pulse of power.
Far below, across the continents of the world, millions looked up toward the heavens and saw the night sky burning with the radiance of a false sun.
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