Chapter 504: Power from the Depths
"Mr. Wang Yu, thank you. The Church of Nightfall's efforts have been indispensable to this campaign. The Alliance and Skyborne City have preserved nearly all of their strength. From here on... no, let us join forces to annihilate the enemy. Our target is the same, and we're already very close to its current position."
Their magitech communications, previously severed by the sheer mass of earth and stone between them, reconnected at that moment. The operator from Skyborne City spoke with barely contained excitement as he voiced his gratitude to Wang Yu.
The advance had been far smoother than anyone predicted. Thanks to the Church of Nightfall clearing the way ahead of time, only a small amount of unavoidable battlefield attrition had occurred. The army's strength was nearly the same as when it first marched out. In truth, with morale soaring, it might even be stronger now.
"Good. Follow the earth elementals' tunnel. You'll be descending for a while, but our target should be there. As for the battle ahead, you likely understand the situation better than I do. We'll coordinate when the time comes."
Wang Yu's response was brief. They were still delving deeper, and the combustive energy that suffused the environment was only growing stronger. Once the army reached the lower layers, they would not only have to face the Utopia, but also endure the harshness of this hostile terrain.
If their wards against the combustive energy were to fail, the consequences would be disastrous. But Skyborne City had more than enough geniuses among its ranks; Wang Yu did not need to solve their problems for them.
As the two armies converged, the ground above them trembled violently. Cascades of earth and rock broke loose, falling like rain onto the ranks below.
"It's an Earthquake spell. Stabilize the ground!"
The legion's wizards immediately recognized the Utopia's attack. The greatest danger of tunneling underground was a cave-in: if tens of millions of tons of earth and stone gave way, everything below would be buried.
For ordinary adventurers, this would be certain death. But for the unified army of the Alliance, it was barely an inconvenience.
To counter an Earthquake spell, one only needed to understand its principles. Earth mana invaded the ground, weakening key points that maintained its structural stability. Reinforcing those same points sufficed to neutralize the spell.
And for the legion's legendary wizards, this was child's play. White dragons exhaled sweeping torrents of freezing mist, forcibly solidifying the collapsing ceiling. Earth-specialized magicians then projected their mana into the rock, knitting the fractured layers back into stability.
"...No. Something's wrong. This isn't a simple Earthquake spell. Their objective isn't to collapse the area. This quake-like effect is only a byproduct of what they're really doing. The Utopia is transporting something upward from a deeper realm!"
The magicians sensed the abnormality quickly. An enormous surge of earth mana surged through the surrounding strata. But Earthquake spells didn't require such sheer quantity—only precise destruction of weak points. This much elemental flow meant only one thing: the earth itself was being driven like a conveyor.
The warning rippled through the Alliance via their communication network, allowing everyone to prepare for what was rising toward them not by waiting passively, but by creating obstacles in their way.
From the heart of Skyborne City, a metal column slightly smaller than a World Anchor plummeted downward. Its reinforced base punched into the earth with the force of its fall. Army wizards immediately channeled mana into the device nested within, jumpstarting its magical machinery.
This was a spell amplifier. Its function mirrored the Utopia's cooperative rituals, but achieved coordination mechanically rather than demanding extreme precision from the casters. The magicians merely needed to cast within its framework.
Working in concert, the magicians cast the enhanced eighth-tier Stone to Mud. More than twenty legendary mages simultaneously invoked the spell Fossil to Mud, each amplifying it individually. The device then combined and magnified their work, elevating the spell far beyond its natural limits into something almost unrecognizably powerful.
A deep, gelatinous churn echoed from below. Whatever the Utopia was shaping below was rapidly transformed. Solid stone liquefied into a vast, pulsing morass of sludge. An entire subterranean sea of mud was conjured in an instant.
The earth, robbed of its support, collapsed downward, opening a massive pit before the Alliance forces. Within the roiling sea of mud below was the object the Utopia was attempting to dredge up.
"We're detecting very strong void fluctuations. The object's shape has been confirmed. It resembles a biological heart, bound in numerous chains. Attack capabilities unknown. Everyone, stay alert."
The magicians whose mental energy extended through their spells perceived the form of the object in the depths. The message spread immediately.
Then, lightning rumbled. With the mud sea halting the heart's ascent, the ideal follow-up attack was lightning.
Blinding blue arcs erupted from the underside of Skyborne City. High-energy thunderbolts speared downward, piercing through layers of mud with ease and striking the target directly.
The city's power cores were running at full capacity, converting all available energy into raw lightning through magical machinery, the most concentrated single-target output Skyborne City could achieve.
In an instant, the entire mud sea was flooded with rampant lightning, destroying everything indiscriminately. Heat surged. The mire boiled and convulsed even more violently.
"Void fluctuations detected. A convergence effect is forming. The density of void energy around the heart has reached a critical point. It is now the nucleus of the surrounding void. Be prepared for whatever attack comes next. The Anchors are activating—prepare for counter-evasion."
Icarus' voice echoed through every link of the alliance's communication network. With Skyborne City's analysis instruments at his command, he had grasped the situation below. Now that the sea of mud had formed and was boiling beneath the assault of high-energy lightning, the Utopia's forces had abandoned their attempt to haul the heart upward with the earth itself. Instead, they seemed intent on rousing the heart's own power.
A mantle of impossibly dense void energy erupted around the heart, erasing the lightning that struck it before surging upward like the rising tide.
Of all those present, only Icarus—having studied Roland's materials—truly understood the nature of this void energy, stronger even than the void wielded by ordinary wizards.
It was power that the heart itself had once possessed. This meant that it had reclaimed the strength it had lost to the void, strength of the same order as that wielded by Sulla and the Pope of the Church of Light. Power that was originally one's own always held overwhelming priority in any clash of void energies.
"This is the power that originally belonged to wizards, but it's only a sliver compared to what they lost. Wizards recover only the faintest trace of it as their mastery of the void grows."
Icarus thought to himself silently. This was the first time he had witnessed with his own eyes the power Roland had spoken of. His mind raced onward. If ancient wizardry was always this potent... then how was such power ever lost?
The target was drawing closer. Tension crept into Icarus' voice. This "heart" was unquestionably a formidable adversary. The Anchors were the key to breaking it, but heavy fire and spell support would be equally indispensable. He opened a link to Astartes, ordering all of Skyborne City's systems to be switched into full war-mode.
At that moment, a wash of darkness swept across the entire formation. Divine night flooded over their bodies and the earth around them. One by one, traces of their presence—breath, mana, sound, heat, the reflection of light—were stripped away.
Drawing the Lady of the Night's power down from the black halo above them, Wang Yu dragged the entire army into a hidden domain, granting them the advantage of seeing the enemy first.
"Ugh... It's so noisy. Is this what gods deal with all the time? Managing believers is exhausting."
Wang Yu shook his head irritably. With the Tree of the Night now under his control, his crude, brute-force way of handling the Chariot's divine power meant that he was exposed to the countless bothersome duties that came bundled with godhood.
In the void, such things could be shrugged off; the environment itself helped smooth over what one didn't understand. But in the material realm, things were far less forgiving. Fortunately, much of the Tree of the Night had long been automated. Systems like the Prayer Network and the Midnight Library ran on their own. His clumsy takeover wouldn't cause anything to collapse.
Still, the problems remained. Every irrelevant scrap of information was being delivered to him in a single, endless stream: the chatter of believers, newly stored texts in the Midnight Library, and countless other trivialities. It was like a swarm of people buzzing endlessly at his ear.
It wasn't even invasive, just frustrating. He couldn't sever it entirely, or he'd lose access to the divine power itself. His mind was beginning to warp from the strain.
"Hold on. I'll adjust the intake for you. Just filter out the useless stuff."
Using Wang Yu's Chariot, Avia swiftly adjusted the structure of the Tree of the Night. After a few moments, the torrent of noise diminished into silence.
"You're a lifesaver."
Wang Yu exhaled gratefully, then turned to the force stirring within the depths of the void.
"Something from the depths, huh?"
"The power of the deep..."
"We underestimated him, after all. Let's use the power of the void available from both nodes right away."
Wang Yu, Avia, and Sulla's voices overlapped at that moment. The true battle was just about to begin.
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