บท 648: Chapter 648
Just a few dozen meters away, the orange and yellow-cored hunters watch the scene before them unfold.
They're secured behind the heavy silver door in the transparent hallway.
I have a few fractions of a second where I can easily pull out a teleport crystal and make my escape; however, the instant the top of the dome cracks open, my perception is able to seep out much further than before.
I'm able to see past the endless abyss of flames around us.
Every moment that passes, and the dome above opens more, my gaze is able to surge further.
This is exactly what Marcus told me would happen when he described the common protocol for violent deals gone bad, and said even True Cores cannot survive the flames.
My initial hopes were that I would be able to stage an attack and that the wind mage would strike back, allowing me to stage them being struck in vital points and use another teleport crystal to run away and make it seem as if they died from this.
In the confusion of it all, I could have even killed this last yellow core and absorbed even more essence.
However, the order member here was a bit weaker than I predicted.
Not only would there be no witness to report this staged betrayal, killing her now would barely grant me a 1-2% gain of my Core's base.
This far more extreme option makes for a more convincing story, and with it, I'm able to leave this dome. Crushing a crystal to leave right now would be a waste of this opportunity.
The fact that we're near Central Headquarters makes me want to take a bit of a risk just to get a glimpse at what Central is really like.
The yellow flames rush into the dome, and simultaneously my perception does, in fact, spread out far enough to get a fuzzy picture in my mind of where Central Headquarters is.
The city is enormous, made of hundreds of skyscrapers at sizes that look like they can house entire cities like Solara or even Vice City itself in a single structure.
I can't get a clear view, only the outlines, as the thick divine flames all around me make for an impenetrable veil.
I can feel that this abyss of flames is a few kilometers high, and a few dozen kilometers wide. However, its length goes on for hundreds of kilometers in both directions, curving to make a massive moat around a mountain that reaches up into the sky.
There are huge cliffs burned with flames all around this Central City, and atop it mana control waves of millions of individual status screens blare through my senses. This isn't even counting the massive buildings that I'm unable to sense through in my current position. I estimate there are tens of millions of people in this massive central headquarters Civilization alone.
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My focus shifts back to the scene in front of me instead of wandering away to the outside world as the dome fully opens and the divine flames rush in.
I brace myself, activating all of my buffs, and creating a defensive layer of divine energy-infused Soul Energy shielding all around my body while activating my greater form and compacting its energy to compress around me.
My stealth skill is still active, but the immense energy I'm letting off can't be fully contained. The only reason the order member behind the clear protective barrier can't see me is because of the [Master of Illusion] buff I'm keeping on to manipulate the perception of reality around me.
I jump upward headfirst into the fire while it completely floods the dome.
My connection with the King and Queen's corpses is severed, and their bodies are burned to ash and dust in milliseconds.
The teleportation platform in the ground shatters from the thrust of my jump, yet the white divine energy-imbued floor below it is untouched...
Simultaneously, I feel a hot pressure envelop my entire body.
Less than a second passes before I feel the true intensity of the flames begin to tear through my defenses with ease.
When I first arrived here and tried to feel the icy dome's strength, and the average strength of these flames, I knew they were strong, but now that I'm plunging into them, I realize they're much more powerful than I expected...
As soon as I leave the dome and am covered in yellow fire, I deactivate my stealth skill so I can go all out...
I pull out my fire and dark magic blades to take full advantage of their stat buffs, but as another half a second passes, and my defense aura grows even stronger, I feel the walls of flames pressing in on me even further.
The heat waves rush through me, and the gravity pushing me down as I try to fly upward feels very reminiscent of the time I was trying to push through the skies within the divine construct toward the green divine serpent.
Whoever made these flames is a True Core user... and the gap between our level of divine power is only becoming clear to me now.
This isn't even a concentrated attack. It is a security system spread out thin, and constantly consuming energy. Yet, a small concentrated portion of it is giving me this much trouble.
I grit my teeth and push upward, as the further I go up, the more the towers within the city atop the mountain come into my mental view.
I can teleport away any time I wish, but this may be my only instant teleportation ticket into Central Headquarters at such close proximity I can get.
Another half a second passes, and I'm just over a third of the way through the flames.
However, the dense hot flames tear all the way through my Soul Energy shielding tethered with the full strength of my True Core.
I pull up a mental interface of my Rising Emperor's Domain, yet I'm too far away from the Dark Continent to get the full stat boosts I want. My aura is being suppressed by these flames, so no one falls within the radius allowing me to take 10%. However, after reaching 1000 links of loyalty, I unlocked a perk that allows me to receive 5% extra no matter how far away I am.
I activate it and pull tens of thousands of stat points and a few dozen trillion MCP from the Crimson Army, my teammates, and many of the normal citizens I have access to.
The mana control does not add much to me at all, but the rise in stats is similar to the full amount I received during my battle with Raven and the Bronze Earth Dragon, filling my body with newfound speed, strength, and endurance.
The additional training I put the Crimson Army through has made quite the difference, but it is still nowhere near enough to make these divine flames' damage negligible.
My rise through the flames becomes much faster, but the pressure of the divine energy all around me is hardly suppressed at all.
It feels as if the breath is being squeezed out of me every moment I stay beneath these yellow flames, and the reality of the Big Three's true strength creeps into my mind.
My blood-bonded armor begins to burn and melt while even my skin starts to become charred by the flames that roar around me.
It feels like if I let up for even a moment, they'll all seep into my body and mind, turning me to ash just like the King and Queen I left behind.
My purple ring glows bright, and I've only seen it do this one time before.
It was when I faced Mr. Freeman before I had my True Core awakened when he attempted to use a mental attack on me tens of times stronger than I was able to handle, but my purple divine barrier managed to suppress the brunt of the blow.
The same thing is happening now, and it only makes me push off the air harder with every step, using all my strength to finally escape through the top of the roaring fiery abyss with heavy breaths and far more fatigue than I expected.
"I'm still not strong enough!" I yell to myself as the pressure starts to go away, and the extreme heat dies down, while the abyss of endless yellow fire gets further away and I continue my upward momentum into the night sky.
The moment the hot burns and immense pressure cease, I reactivate my stealth skill and the purple ring around my finger stops glowing as well.
While taking a deep breath, I deactivate my Rising Emperor's Domain's stat and mana control borrowing perk and stare up at the massive city that I approach.
The mountain is truly massive.
I could tell it was over 200 km wide and over 30 km tall while using my perception from below the flames, but seeing it with my own two eyes is a different experience.
Paired with the realization that the being that created those flames below me makes my True Core look like a dimly lit candle, the futuristic skyscrapers that pierce the clouds above look magnificent.
This is where the rulers of the world have created their city.
They have been in control for centuries, growing in power before the system even existed here for humans.
My eyes widen with awe and respect, granting me a new perspective on why Raven, the Saint, and all of the other Order members fear the Big Three so much.
The massive yellow ring of fire below the mountain sends off so much heat and light, that it almost looks like it's daytime below the mountain.
Then, even above, the city lights coming off the tens of thousands of windows on each tower, bright street lights that line the roads that are busy with cars and people even now in the dead of night, it looks as if this is a bright shining light of day that never goes out.
With my enhanced perception, I hear and see millions of conversations taking place. Food, products, and services are being bought and sold. Some of the magical nature, selling gear for new hunters and buying loot from the hundreds of dungeon hubs all over the city. Others are unawakened businessmen and women with normal families going about their daily lives.
There's music blaring at every street corner, and every citizen has their own transmission tablet blinking and giving off sounds of their own.
There are massive parks full of wildlife that are as large as entire cities back in the 8 Great Regions, and dungeon hubs full of E,D,C, and B-Class portals that make the canyon of dungeons back in the Crimson City look very average.
Huge warehouses, factories, and office buildings are scattered throughout the massive civilization, sustaining many pockets of culture that stretch hundreds of kilometers.
It's like a world of its own.
The vast amount of information to take in right now after such a brutal event is extremely overstimulating. I just stop and stare, floating over the sea of flames for almost a full minute to take it all in.
My head slowly rises into the sky, looking up into the clouds to watch the skyscrapers fade away as they rise so tall.
Though, my all-seeing eye does see further and catches something very odd slowly spinning around the city in a circle about 100 kilometers above even the highest tower.
There are three large rectangular boxes, about the size of sports fields.
No matter how hard I look at them, no readings come back.
Even the energy that keeps them suspended above the massive city, endlessly rotating, is a mystery to me.
Though, I do come to the conclusion that they are definitely made of the same black originator stone that the island of Palmyra is made of, and the tower in the center of the Dark Continent.
The moment I realize this, my stealth-imbued aura of perception retracts, as it is probably best not to tamper with things I don't understand in the presence of forces greater than my own.
As I float upward, close to the burnt walls of the mountain, leading to the outskirts of the massive civilization, I send a mental message to one of my body doubles. It is tasked to go back to the island of palmyra to make sure Marcus doesn't leak anything that has happened today, and begin taking control of the kingdom with Bri and Rodrigo's help.
In the meantime, I use self regeneration tethered with divine energy to slowly heal my burns and the damaged armor while changing my mana control output and physical appearance to look like an unsuspecting citizen of this massive city.
I need to learn more about my enemies. Although I haven't even met them, I'm now certain The Big Three are more powerful than I ever imagined.
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Author's Note:
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